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3Sp 3To&n jF. (Senrniff. 



TENNYSON'S IN MEMORIAM: ITS PURPOSE 
AND ITS STRUCTURE. A Study. Crown 8vo, 
gilt top, $1.25. 

THE EPIC OF THE INNER LIFE. Being the 
Book of Job, Translated Anew. With Introductory 
Study, Notes, etc. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, 
Boston and New York. 



THE EPIC OF THE INNER LIFE 



BEING 



THE BOOK QF JOB 



TRANSLATED ANEW, AND ACCOMPANIED WITH 
NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTORY STUDY 



JOHN F. GENUNG 
it 




(op 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Qlbt fttberst&c $n$s, Camfcrt&ge 

1S91 






Copyright, 1891, 
By JOHN F. GENUNG. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. , U. S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



To 

THE MEMORY OF 
MY REVERED INSTRUCTORS IN HEBREW EXEGESIS 

TAYLER LEWIS 

AND 

FRANZ DELITZSCH 



PREFACE 

r I ^HE kind reception accorded to an article 
-*■ on " The Interpretation of the Book of 
Job/' published in the " Andover Review " for 
November, 1888, has encouraged the author to 
hope that a revision and completion of the 
study therein outlined may not be unaccepta- 
ble to the reading public. In the carrying out 
of this work, thanks are due first of all to the 
editors and publishers of that Review, not only 
for their ready permission to make such use 
of that article as may seem necessary, but also 
for the hearty Godspeed that they have given 
to the undertaking. And now that the study 
has assumed the proportions of a book, some 
questions naturally arising about its form and 
the general treatment here adopted require, 
perhaps, the answer of a preface. 

Those readers to whom the question-begging 
name Epic, displayed on the title-page, is a 
stumbling-block that must needs be removed 



VI PREFACE 

before they can with complacency read further, 
are referred to pages 20-26 for a definition of 
the modified sense in which I have ventured to 
use the term. 

The Book of Job, full as it is of religious 
edification, is also a poem, a work of literary 
art, to be read and judged as we would read 
and judge any poem, with the same favoring 
presuppositions, the same candor of criticism. 
It has long been my conviction that if we 
should make for it no demand but the literary 
demand, seeking in the broad diffused light of 
every day simply that unity of idea and treat- 
ment which we have a right to expect in every 
work of art, the book would prove itself not 
less sacred, rather more ; while also it would 
gain greatly by stepping out of its age-con- 
structed frame of abstruse erudition into com- 
mon people's homes and hearts. Whether by 
the present Translation, Notes, and Introduc- 
tory Study I have in any degree succeeded in 
verifying this conviction must be left to my 
readers to judge. 

The question naturally arises, Why make 
a new translation ? why not use the noble 



PREFACE Vll 

Revised Version ? Well, this is the answer 
that a prolonged study of the book has made 
increasingly evident : The Revised Version, 
being the work of a company of scholars, rep- 
resents the average of their views ; it is the 
somewhat colorless, or perhaps we may say 
low-relief, product of many minds, all of whom 
must sink to some extent their individual pref- 
erences in order to accommodate themselves to 
a common and composite result. The work 
as it lies before us is the verdict of a majority 
vote. But the original was presumably the 
work of one mind ; such at least it must be 
presupposed until critical study compels an- 
other judgment. To. get accurately at that 
one mind's idea, as a whole and in all its parts, 
it seemed to me necessary to pass the work 
anew through the crucible of a single mind, 
whose business it should be first to find what 
the book supremely stands for, and then, with- 
out having to trim and modify in obedience to 
divergent views, to estimate candidly and cor- 
rectly every shading of expression, every de- 
gree of intensity, every transition, every con- 
nection, in the light of that dominant idea. Of 



viii PREFACE 

course this necessitates retranslation. Trans- 
lation is interpretation ; it cannot be other- 
wise ; it must take more or less the color of 
the mind that draws the idea out of the ori- 
ginal. True as this is of all translation, it is 
especially the case in translation from the 
Hebrew, in which language the provisions for 
finer shadings of thought are so meagre, one 
particle, for instance, having often to do duty 
for a variety of relations. The Hebrew lan- 
guage presents its thought in great unsquared 
blocks, sublime and simple ; and these the 
translator has to square and polish, so that 
they will joint together and make out of many 
one structure. The only way to do this effect- 
ually is to live with the author's mind, in self- 
effacing submission and obedience, until the 
power is obtained to follow all his sequences, 
anticipate his turnings and objections, gradu- 
ally embody all his thoughts into a complex 
unity wherein every part shall be luminous 
with the spirit of the whole. This I have 
endeavored to do, not without a good deal of 
painstaking labor. And the present transla- 
tion, whatever other merits or defects it may 



PREFACE IX 

have, will, I think, be found at least homoge- 
neous, the work of one mind interpreting one 
idea. 

A new translation, from the " natural " point 
of view, is also justified, as seems to me, by 
the fact that there is a strong tendency in a 
company translation, made in the interests of 
Church and Christianity, to make every clause 
at all hazards a source of spiritual and homilet- 
ical edification. The custom of founding ser- 
mons on passages of Scripture, which latter 
for this purpose are torn from their connec- 
tions, may be legitimate for religious instruc- 
tion, but its operation is sadly unfavorable to 
the reading or translation of a book of Scrip- 
ture as a homogeneous whole. My hope is, 
that the present attempt to translate the Book 
of Job, with the sermonizing instinct for the 
time being effaced, may prove not unfruitful in 
suggestion. 

Having made the translation with care, I 
have then proceeded to treat it as if it were an 
English poem. That is to say, the notes are 
not devoted, in any great degree, to telling the 
reader just how this and that passage got it- 



X PREFACE 

self done into English, or how many meanings 
Dillmann and Delitzsch and Ewald and Zock- 
ler found admissible, or how much suggestive- 
ness there is in a certain Hebrew root or 
idiom. Perhaps in so denying myself I have 
missed a good chance to display learning ; but 
for this I do not "care, being more concerned 
with the question what the ordinary reader 
wants explained. The notes are accordingly 
designed mainly to trace the sequences and 
interdependencies of the thought, and to solve 
briefly the difficulties inherent in the work of 
a remote age and land. In the numerous 
cross-references, too, from one part of the 
book to the other, the reader may see how pre- 
dominant the endeavor has been to make the 
book interpret itself. The author of a book, 
after all, is his own best expositor. 

As a further help to the reader, I have dis- 
carded the old division of the poem into chap- 
ters and verses, which often makes misleading 
interruptions to the connection, and have 
adopted a division into sections, according to 
the natural articulation of the thought, retain- 
ing, however, for facility in comparison, the old 



PREFACE XI 

notation at the bottom of the page. To this 
division into sections with their subdivisions, 
a parallel, suggestive alike for its mechanical 
helpfulness and for its delicate fitness to the 
nature of the thought so articulated, may be 
seen in the notation of Tennyson's " Maud," 
which is a "monodrama M worked out by a con- 
nected series of lyrics ; another, less closely 
indicated, in the " In Memoriam," which also 
portrays a progressive spiritual history by the 
lyrical method, its individual sections purport- 
ing to be " short swallow-flights of song." The 
value of these suggestions for the Book of Job 
is obvious. Its method, too, is strongly lyrical ; 
and by choosing the same manner of division 
and subdivision as has given fitting physiog- 
nomy to the above-named poems, I set off the 
speakers' changing yet progressive moods in 
such wise that the eye as well as the mind of 
the reader can better discriminate them. 

So much for what seems necessary to ex- 
plain. If the other features of my book are 
not self -justifying, no preface can justify them. 

Amherst, Massachusetts. 
February, 1891. 



CONTENTS 

PAGK 

I. THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 

Preliminary — The Treatment required of the 
Book of Job 3 

I. Its Central and Ruling Idea ... 8 

II. Its Literary Class — the Epic . . . .20 

III. Connection and Continuity of its Parts . 29 

IV. Considerations regarding its Origin , . .89 

II. THE POEM 

Persons 123 

The Argument 125 

Translation and Notes 131 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 



" The aim in expounding a great poem should be, 7iot to discover 
an endless variety of ?nea?iings often co?ttradictory, but whatever 
it has of great and perennial sig7iifica7ice ; for such it must have, 
or it would lo?ig ago have ceased to be living and operative, would 
long ago have taken refuge in the Chartreuse of great libraries, 
dumb thenceforth to all mankind. We do not mean to say that this 
minute exegesis is useless or unpraiseworthy, but only that it should 
be subsidiary to the larger way." — Lowell, Essay on Dante. 



STUDY OF THE BOOK OF JOB 



w 



HEN we see the natural style," says 
Pascal, " we are quite astonished and 
delighted ; for we expected to see H<nv the 
an author, and we find a man." Stu- *"****»• 

Perftaally 

dents who note merely the superficial interpreted. 
traits of the Book of Job — its regular struc- 
ture, its long colloquies, its argumentative tone 
— may easily discern therein only an author, 
employing an elaborate and somewhat artificial 
framework to group together for discussion 
certain hard problems concerning man's des- 
tiny and God's dealings with him on the earth. 
Is not this, as matter of fact, what we are di- 
rected to by the vast volume of interpretation 
which for ages has been lavished on the book ? 
Whatever else we may find in it, we are taught 
to regard it first of all as a grand monument of 
reasoning, as a world-debate between Job and 
his friends, in which we are to look for a cate- 
gorical decision telling men for all time why 
the righteous suffer. But surely its perpetual 
outflashings of the natural style, which will not 



4 THE BOOK OF JOB 

brook the restraints of mere dialectics, nor stay 
How the to k u ^d a coldly consistent structure 
K lt n fe^fven °^ thought, should be accepted as an 
m£kef Usi ' invitation to deeper search. These 
^Irpreta^ burning words are much more than 
iion ' a debate. If ever a book revealed 

a man, if ever through the indignant thrusts 
of controversy were heard the beatings of a 
warm human heart, it is in this story of the 
patriarch of Uz. So much, whatever prob- 
lems have to be encountered later, is evident 
even to a hasty perusal. The task of inter- 
pretation is not easy ; but let us at all events 
follow the line of least resistance. Studied as 
an argument cunningly put together by a 
skilled reasoner, the Book of Job is beset with 
difficulties well-nigh insurmountable. Studied 
as the utterance of a man like ourselves, who 
speaks out in the natural style what is in him, 
it is the clear and unambiguous voice of hu- 
manity, which finds echo in all the world. 

To restore this book to its natural style, to 
The treat- rea -d it without prepossessions in the 
Tofhtbook broad light that falls on every man, 
to-day, seems to me the kind of treatment 
which it most needs to-day. For it has come 
as contrasted down to us so thickly wrapped in a 
treatmtntwe covering of associations erudite and 

see it receiv- . - ... ,, lf ■ , 

ing. dogmatic that it is in no little danger 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 5 

of being lost to the one class for whom it was 
intended. " A noble book, all men's book," is 
what Carlyle says of it ; yet to the plain reader 
it appears rather an arsenal of texts for the 
theologian, or a quarry of hard words for the 
commentator, or a dilapidated relic of antiquity 
to be carved and refashioned according to the 
notions of the critic. Right and necessary as 
such treatment is, perhaps, in its place, let it 
once get the upper hand, as indeed it seems 
very nearly to have done, and the book is de- 
graded into one of those " things in books' 
clothing" which Charles Lamb accounted no 
books at all, being doomed thenceforth to 
stand by the side of other learned lumber fill- 
ing up scholars' shelves, and preserving the 
credit of their libraries. Such a fate for the 
Book of Job were melancholy indeed. For 
the book was never written to satisfy its universal 

T . human in- 

an esoteric few. It came glowing teresu 
from a large human heart, from the furnace of 
universal human affliction ; and it is adapted 
to reach every soul that has thought and suf- 
fered. The more we penetrate beyond the 
mere skill of the author to communion in spirit 
with the man, the more will this universal 
character, this cry from the heart of humanity, 
far beyond the jargon of a class or the cunning 
performance of a pen, impress itself upon us. 



6 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Time and space are annihilated, and the unreal 
vagaries of speculation seem outlived, as this 
echo of our own deep consciousness comes 
floating to us across the centuries. Such are 
the characteristics that inhere in Pascal's natu- 
ral style. Such, too, are the marks of the true 
world-poem, of the poem which, though neces- 
sarily speaking in the dialect of a nation and 
an age, is the exponent of " those elementary 
feelings which subsist permanently in the race, 
and which are independent of time." 

It is on these broad human lines, recogniz- 
objectand ^ n S the man beneath the written 
r /r7senf' ke word, that we will try now to study 
out the meaning of this Book of Job. 
The study will indeed reveal great problems, 
whose filaments stretch out through the world 
of theological and philosophical inquiry ; it 
will not fail to deepen our sense of the marvel- 
ous literary art which has presided alike over 
word and plan ; but, what is of more intimate 
concern to us, it will disclose to our gaze in 
clearer outlines one of the great of the earth, 
a man of fears and doubts like ourselves, ris- 
ing up against his doom, which is humanity's 
doom, and conquering his way to hope and 
peace. Invention or fact, the man Job is one 
of the guiding figures of the ages, a world's 
hero ; whose words, the record of a great con- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY J 

flict and victory, we cannot afford to leave 
cloistered among the learned few. 

Of the characteristics of the book which ap- 
pear at first opening, none are more TwotyPes 
obvious than this, that its structural % P Zucu!re: 
outline is twofold. On the one hand, "*"*** 
its basis is simple narrative. It tells the story 
of a man eminently good, prosperous, and 
happy, who, at the instance of Satan, though 
himself perceiving therein only God's venge- 
ful stroke, is suddenly deprived of everything 
— property, children, health, the world's 
esteem ; who, nevertheless, though accused 
and deserted by relatives and friends, sturdily 
refuses to own that his affliction is due to 
sin, or that his punishment is just ; and who, 
after many pains of doubt and conquests of 
faith, is commended by Jehovah and restored 
to twice his former prosperity. On the other 
hand, the main body of the work and argu _ 
looks like pure discussion and argu- ment ' 
ment : Job and his friends affirming and an- 
swering, reproving and recriminating, in three 
elaborate cycles of discourse ; Elihu coming in, 
full of words, after the friends are silenced ; and 
Jehovah pronouncing the final answer out of 
the whirlwind. So prominent is this second 
type of structure that it is no wonder the book 



8 THE BOOK OF JOB 

has been prevailingly judged by it ; yet the 
which type question remains fairly open which of 

predotni- 

states? the two should be regarded as giving 

supreme law to the work ; nor is the question 
How are the less pressing, how the combination 

two inter- 

woven? can also be a harmony — argument 
and action working together to set forth out of 
many one comprehensive, dominant idea. 

Important questions these, with the satis- 
Significance factory investigation of which are 

of these in- . . 

quiries. closely associated all the lines of in- 
quiry that this study will open : the various 
considerations relating to the thought, the 
form, the connection of parts, and the origin, 
of the book before us. 



First of all, it is important to inquire what 
/. itscen- in this book is most central, what the 

tralandrul- 

ingidea. Book of Job supremely stands for; 
or, as the question is usually propounded, 
what is its problem ? 

Any answer to this question, I suspect, 
Difficulty of which reduces the teaching of the 
e this%i l a g book to an abstract proposition, or 

proposition. f()rm Qf WQrds> jg bound to be unSa tiS- 

factory. The book is too much like life for 
that. In real life and experience things do not 
shape themselves to didactic ends. Good and 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 9 

evil, wisdom and error, are subtly interwoven 
with all events, but the pattern is not system- 
atic ; it is only in poetry that we are conducted 
unfailingly to poetic justice. To force on 
nature a didactic purpose is the mark of the 
inferior artist. The Book of Job evinces the 
consummate artistic genius that created it by 
reading like a transcript from life, with its 
struggles, its doubts, its eddying inconsisten- 
cies. The action reaches its end, not by the 
arrow-line of a homiletic plan, but through 
such gropings and stumblings, such gradual 
discoveries of the true way, as must content 
us all in this mystery-encompassed existence. 
We may not unfitly apply to it what has been 
said of Shakespeare's plays : " It teaches 
many lessons, but not any one prom- y A ^ 
inent above another ; and when we sZrfstuj- 
have drawn from it all the direct in- %£,%£* 
struction which it contains, there voLu ^ 2 ^ 
remains still something unresolved, — some- 
thing which the artist gives, and which the 
philosopher cannot give." Every one who 
has lived close to the beating heart of the 
poem must feel how it fades and shrinks by 
being turned into a mere moral tale. Like 
Mont Blanc, it radiates awe into many an en- 
raptured beholder, as it rises glorious in the 
warm flooding sunshine that cheers the com- 



IO THE BOOK OF JOB 

mon world ; but interpose the cloud of didac- 
ticism, and the next moment it stands a 
blanched, shivering, forbidding expanse of 
snows and chasms. 

Nor are the grounds of this feeling wholly 
aesthetic. As a plain matter of interpretation, 
too, we find that any form of words, however 
felicitous, in which men attempt to imprison 
the poem's teaching and purpose fails to satisfy 
its whole idea ; some of its choicest portions 
are sure to remain outside, ravelled and loose. 
It is chiefly for this unconfessed reason, I 
think, that modern critics have felt compelled 
How such t0 manipulate the poem to suit their 
lasZncrlii- own ideas, — cutting out passages 
here, and making conjectural emenda- 
tions there ; assigning one section to the original 
author, who began well, and another to that 
bite noir of criticism, the later editor or tran- 
scriber, who bunglingly tried to steer the 
poem's thought into a new channel. Taking 
for granted that every part must at all events 
square with some supreme didactic idea, their 
suspicion naturally falls on whatever does not. 
They have confessedly no other ground to 
work upon that is decisive ; apart from this 
the poem looks like a unity, nor is there sign 
of a record to prove later changes. And when 
the critics, having once given free rein to the 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY II 

refashioning spirit, have cut and carved to their 
hearts' content, there is nothing left but a torso. 
To see how this works, let us examine the 
prevailing idea of the design, or prob- Illustrated 
lem, of the Book of Job, and follow it f J^ a % g 
a little into its logical consequences. view - 
According to Professor Conant's view, the 
subject of the book is "The mystery CmmHfM 
of God's providential government of ^sffZk 
men ; " or, to put it more specifically )f n°and 
in Professor Delitzsch's words, which f ° tes ^' % 
come essentially to the same thing : " Warum 
ergehen liber den Gerechten Leiden 

-r -v t • tt-« i Delitzsch, 

auf Leiden ? — das ist die Frage, deren Commentar 

. iiber das 

Beantwortuno; sich das Buch lob zur Buch fob, 

2ded.,p.3. 

Aufgabe macht." 1 Now it is beyond 
doubt that this question, or some aspect of it, 
plays a large part in determining the course, 
or action, of the poem ; Job's friends, for ex- 
ample, din it into his ears until he is fain to 
cry out, " I have heard many things like these." 
But does it play the leading part ? that is, is 
this the most central and inclusive subject, to 
which all else is secondary, or is this itself a 
motif in the exposition of a deeper idea ? 

Let us see what results from making this 
didactic idea supreme. 

1 M Why does suffering on suffering befall the righteous ? — 
that is the question to the answering of which the Book of 
Job devotes itself/' 



12 THE BOOK OF JOB 

In the first place, this view subordinates the 
divine and presumably directive element of the 
How this book to the human ; making the book 
v JiZtefthe' centre in a question raised and dis- 
iTnufthe cussed by human disputants, and re- 
garding the Lord as appearing, in 
the theophany at the end, mainly in order 
to settle the point in dispute. At the same 
time, the question propounded by Satan at the 
beginning, " Doth Job fear God for nought ? " 
and in fact the whole foundation laid in the 
Prologue, is ignored from the point where 
the discussion begins. Thus it cannot be said 
that the introduction really introduces. This 
and weak- f act operates to give a decided centrif- 
Zr/o/thl' ugal tendency to the Prologue; nor, 
Prologue. i nc i eec ^ are there wanting those who 
would discard the Prologue as not belonging 
to the original design of the book. It does, in 
fact, seem to be a kind of intrusion, with its 
glimpse into heaven and the divine counsels, 
if, after all, the speculations of a company of be- 
wildered mortals so completely overshadow it. 

A second and more fundamental result is, 

that this view commits the Book of 

view makes Job almost wholly to the argument- 

the book a f . 

debate; see ative type or structure above men- 
tioned ; making it the record of a 
kind of debating club, wherein the question 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 1 3 

is discussed at great length, for and against, 
and is finally decided by the Lord from the 
whirlwind. Thus, with the narrative element 
practically ignored, the reader is left and practi _ 
to work his way over arid fields of %pj£Z? 
dialectics, in search of a Q. E. D. ; a™ 4 "-* 
and he may well wonder where a book that is 
so harnessed to the plodding tasks of prose 
could ever have got its acknowledged poetic 
power. Apart from this aesthetic objection, 
also, there are not wanting elements of the 
book, even in its purely controversial portions, 
which remonstrate against being pressed too 
rigorously into such a mould. For one thing, 
the Lord's assumed decision of the 

To such a 

question, when we come to examine debate the 

Lord's 

it, is no decision : it does not address words are 

no decision, 

itself to what the men are debating 
at all. In order to make it apply to the case, 
we have to resort to what may be inferred 
from this and that. This fact has not escaped 
the notice of interpreters ; and Elihu, and Elihu 
who is the wax nose of the critics, is h C nty i n ut defi- 
brought in very opportunely, being as ZuhSs^L 
much of a refuge on one theory as he ient ' 
is a stumbling-block on others. And indeed 
his words sum up the discussion, it must be 
owned, more really than do the Lord's ; for 
which reason he is regarded by some as fur- 



14 THE BOOK OF JOB 

nishing " the first half of the positive solution 

of the problem." Thus it is given to 

{Lan g e),p. him, as he plumed himself on doing, to 

2lS. 

set right both Job and his friends. 
Yet here we encounter another difficulty ; for 
Elihu is abruptly dismissed by the first word 
section from the whirlwind as one who " dark- 
xxvi. 2,3- eneth counsel by words without 
knowledge/' and Job is singled out at the end, 
of all the disputants, as the only one who has 
section "spoken of God the thing that is 
xxx. s, 12. r jght » if the poem is a debate, its 
ending must be regarded as vague. Then 
further, when we come to examine into the 
Nor is the nianner in which the debaters answer 
1uc£ e se?f- one another we find little of that vig- 
consisteut. orous gj ve an( j ^ake which we asso- 
ciate with the close grasp and analysis of a 
question. The speakers wander wide of the 
mark that we have set for them ; there is little 
real progress in the reasoning, and much that 
we have to explain, or excuse, on the conven- 
ient ground of Oriental discursiveness, Job, 
who is regarded as the uncompromising antag- 
onist of all the others, not infrequently seems 
see, /or ex- to gi ye away his case; and once, in- 
7ionxix. c ~ deed, he so closely reechoes his op- 
I2 ~ 43 ' ponents* thought that some interpre- 

ters have been inclined to give his speech to 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 15 

Zophar. Then there is the twenty-eighth chap- 
ter, the magnificent praise of Wis- Section xix% 
dom, which certainly no one would * 6 - /0 * 
consent to banish from the poem ; yet into this 
scheme of a debate it fits so poorly, and seems 
with all its princely beauty so out of place, 
that it is conjectured by Professor Delitzsch to 
have been an insertion from the author's or 
some later editor's portfolio. 

We thus find that the debate theory, with 
its assumed main subject, " The mystery of 
God's providential government of men," does 
not result in an exposition so homogeneous as 
we could wish. Some parts of the 
poem are left in rather unstable equi- suit of this 

view. 

librium, while others have to be 
pressed quite arbitrarily into the scheme that 
we have made for them. The same fate would, 
I feel sure, befall any other abstrac- Unsat ; s f ac . 
tion, or general proposition, that ^di/Zctk 
might be taken as the supreme goal object% 
of the poem's teaching ; the trouble lies with 
the didacticism itself rather than with any 
particular expression of it. Any object that 
contemplates being wrought out by discussion 
alone must of necessity leave the interpreter 
stranded far short of his ideal resting-point, 
which is only in that place where he sees all 
the parts of the book in their proper position, 



1 6 THE BOOK OF JOB 

and doing what the deepest genius of the work 
requires. 

It is no part of my present plan to enumer- 
ate the theories, sometimes gro- 

A glance at ii-riiii 

certain me- tesquely far-ietched, that have been 

chanical in- . . 

terpreta- imposed on this long-suffering Book 
of Job. Nor need I stay to describe 
at length the arithmetical style of interpreta- 
tion, which works out the poem's problem, so 
to say, by the rule of three ; laboriously com- 
puting the three sections of the book, the 
three parts of the poem proper, the three cycles 
of speeches, the three pairs in each cycle, the 
three discourses of Elihu, 1 the three strophes 
in many of the speeches, and the three temp- 
tations of Job. On this line of ex- 
fecTthe^rts position the tendency, already men- 

of the poem. . _ . r T , , , 

tioned, to assign one of Job s speeches 
to Zophar is augmented by the fact that 
thereby the third round of debate and the 
three-times-three speeches of Job and his 
friends are charmingly completed ; and poor 
Elihu's tenure is made more precarious by the 
fact, forsooth, that he is a fourth speaker, who 
comes unintroduced by the Prologue. All this 
seems to me the sad result of trying to stretch 
a living poem on the Procrustean rack of a 

1 So reckoned, I suppose, in order to preserve the general 
symmetry ; though as matter of fact Elihu speaks four times. 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY \J 

dead, mechanical plan. I ought not, perhaps, 
to pass over Elihu with such slight notice 
here, seeing that just now in the critical realm 
he is everywhere spoken against ; nor would 
I venture to leave him thus did I not hope to 
make clear by and by that the poem, as it now 
stands, has an artistic unity obvious enough 
to reconcile him fully to his place. 

For an artistic unity the poem certainly has ; 
let not the foregoing criticisms be taken as 
urged against that fact ; a unity more compre- 
hensive and poetic, and at the same time not 
less absolute, than could be obtained 

Wherein 

on the lines I have described. Only, centres the 

J artistic um~ 

that unity centres in a person rather tyo/the 

J * poem. 

than in a system of thought or reason- 
ing ; it is Job himself, the man Job, with his 
bewilderment of doubt, his utter honesty with 
himself and the world, his outreaching faith, his 
loyalty through all darkness and mystery to 
what is Godlike, who is the solution of the Job- 
problem, far more truly than Job's words, or 
the words of Elihu, or the august address from 
the whirlwind. How God deals with men, and 
how men may interpret his dealings ; why 
God sees fit to afflict the righteous ; these are 
indeed important questions, and not to be 
ignored ; but more vital still is the question 
what Job is, becomes, achieves, in the fiery 



1 8 THE BOOK OF JOB 

trial of God's unexplained visitation. In the 
answer to that personal question lies the su- 
preme answer to all the rest. It is not a mere 
author that we find here, but a man. And as 
we trace the progress of Job's soul, step by 
step, revealed to us through his own words 
and through the attacks of his friends, we 
shall be brought to a contemplation of great- 
ness in life and character such as, for sub- 
limity, it will be hard to parallel in literature, 
however highly we may value the divinest 
creations of an ^Eschylus or a Milton. 

Thus, in the person and spiritual history of 
How this J°b> we are brought back to the nar- 
1Zhi M narra- rative basis which, so long as we con- 

tive element. ^^ Qnly ^ discourses Q f the pQem) 

we are in danger of ignoring. Under these 
discourses we are to trace not the building of 
a system, but the progress of a character, tried, 
developed, victorious ; for they reveal how the 
patriarch works out, or perhaps we may better 
say embodies, the solution of a great problem. 
What, then, is the problem, if such is its solu- 
tion ? We need not look far for the answer 
statement to this question. The problem, pro- 
°probiem. ' pounded by Satan at the outset, and 
tested by permission of Jehovah, is, " Doth Job 
fear God for nought ?" This is, of course, 
the sneer of utter selfishness against all that 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 19 

is loyal and disinterested : it asks, in effect, Is 
there such a thing as whole - souled, self-f or 
getting service of God, just for His sake and 
for righteousness* sake ? Nor is such a ques- 
tion, we must admit, very strange in a world 
where the fear of God is regarded as the sure 
road to worldly prosperity. Where How a an- 

., . . siuers to the 

such an idea prevails it is quite possi- ageinwhick 

i i r i n • ** was P r °- 

ble for piety to become, to all intents pounded. 
and purposes, merely a refined selfishness ; 
how can we tell from the outside whether it 
is serving God for His sake or because such 
service is a paying investment ? Yes : there 
is a place in history where the question just 
fits in ; Satan has found the weak point in that 
Old Testament standard of piety and its re- 
ward. And Job's life, as it is traced in the 
glowing, indignant, faith-inspired words of his 
complaint, is the triumphant answer. H(nv y ob 
Job does fear God for nought: that solvesit ' 
is, his integrity is no vulgar barter for wages, 
as Satan supposes, but deeply founded in the 
truth of things, — so deeply that he takes 
leave of friends, of family, of life, nay, of God 
himself, as he has hitherto regarded God, in 
order to be true. And if Job, a man like our- 
selves, has wrought out the answer, then the 
answer exists in humanity. There is such a 
thing as disinterested piety, and it contains 



20 THE BOOK OF JOB 

whole worlds of faith and insight. Or, to 

gather the history before us into a sentence : 

There is a service of God which is not 

The solution W0RK F °R REWARD I IT IS A HEART- 
e ap7opod- iU LOYALTY, A HUNGER AFTER God's 
tion. PRESENCE, WHICH SURVIVES LOSS AND 

CHASTISEMENT ; WHICH IN SPITE OF CONTRA- 
DICTORY SEEMING CLEAVES TO WHAT IS GOD- 
LIKE AS THE NEEDLE SEEKS THE POLE ; AND 
WHICH REACHES UP OUT OF THE DARKNESS AND 
HARDNESS OF THIS LIFE TO THE LIGHT AND 
LOVE BEYOND. 

This, if we must chill it down from the glow 
of its personal and poetic utterance to a gene- 
ralization, is what, as I conceive, the Book of 
Job stands for. But of this answer, as of the 
problem, the hero is as little aware as the rest. 
Wrought out in darkness and anguish, it is 
known only to those celestial spectators who 
rejoice, and to that scoffing spirit who is dis- 
comfited by it. For the answer is not put in 
words, nor made a didactic issue : it is lived. 



ii. 

If, then, this poem centres in a hero, whose 
//. its uu spiritual achievements it makes known 

erary class, . _ .. . . 

the Epk. to us, we have thus indicated the lit- 
erary class to which it is to be predominantly 
assigned. I regard this ancient book as the 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 21 

record of a sublime epic action, whose scene is 
not the tumultuous battle-field, nor the arena 
of rash adventure, but the solitary soul of a 
righteous man. It contains, though in some- 
what unusual form, the governing elements of 
an epic poem. 

This designation of the poem as an epic, 
however, is not to be made without The word 
some confession of how little, as well taken in a 

, , , . . f modified 

as how much, there is to justify it. sense. 
The whole genius of the Hebrew literature is 
so different from that of the Greeks that it is 
only by an accommodation of terms that we 
can apply to it the categories derived from the 
forms of the latter. This poem, for instance, 
looks at first sight more like a drama than 
an epic ; it contains fairly individualized char- 
acters, and its thought is developed by means 
of dialogue or colloquy. It has been called a 
didactic poem ; and such undoubtedly it is, if, 
as many think, it is preeminently a debate. 
Nor is there lacking in every part a lyric in- 
tensity which not infrequently seems almost to 
sweep the action away from its logical moor- 
ings into its own headlong utterance of a 
mood. Yet in spite of these unto- Matthew 
ward modifications, it is fruitful and saysinCr&t- 

. r r t cism, second 

significant to refer the poem to a pre- series, p. u?- 
vailing type. " We may rely upon it," says 



22 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Matthew Arnold, " that we shall not improve 
upon the classification adopted by the Greeks 
for kinds of poetry ; that their categories of 
epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a nat- 
ural propriety, and should be adhered to. It 
may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two 
categories a poem belongs ; whether this or 
that poem is to be called, for instance, narra- 
tive or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to 
be found in every good poem a strain, a pre- 
dominant note, which determines the poem as 
belonging to one of these kinds rather than 
the other; and here is the best proof of the 
value of the classification, and of the advantage 
of adhering to it." 

To the view of the poem's class which I 
seeming have ventured here to take, there 

lack of epic 

action, presents itself at first thought a 

grave objection. The narrative, the action, 
seems lacking. The whole course of the poem 
is developed through what Job and Eliphaz 
and Bildad and the rest " answered and said." 
and how ex- May there not, however, be an action 
tiamed. disguised, an action wherein the 
speaker's words, like windows, reveal the great 
spiritual events that are taking place in the 
speaker's soul ? I think I shall be able to 
show that there is, and a grand one. An un- 
usual action it indeed is, for poetry ; perhaps, 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 2$ 

therefore, requiring just that union of struc- 
tural types, the narrative and the argumenta- 
tive, which I have already pointed out. Fur- 
ther, the Hebrew poetic style, with its basis 
the parallelism, which pauses at the TheHebre7V 
end of every line and develops the *■"***•' 
thought by perpetual repetition and antithesis, 
is singularly unadapted to narration, itsdisad . 
— so unadapted, that when the He- vantages 
brew author has a simple story to tell, as, for 
instance, in the Prologue and Epilogue to our 
poem, he has spontaneous recourse to prose. 
On the other hand, for a sententious 
lesson, or mashal, for the brief and 
telling utterance of emotion, aspiration, precept, 
the Hebrew poetic style is a remarkably felici- 
tous medium. Now in the Book of Job we have 
indeed a story, an action, but of very peculiar 
kind : the scene, so far as appears to the eye, 
only an ash-heap outside an Arab city, but to 
the inner view the soul of man, with all its 
warring passions, beliefs, convictions. It is 
the spiritual history of the man of Uz, his 
struggles and adventures, unknown to sense, 
but real to faith, as his fervid thoughts "go 
sounding on, a dim and perilous way." For 
portraying such an action, so as to lay the in- 
most thoughts and feelings of one soul upon 
another, this mashal style, with its trenchant 



24 THE BOOK OF JOB 

parallelisms, so far from being a disadvantage, 
is perhaps the unique and only adequate me- 
dium. Through it not the author speaks, but 
the man himself, laying bare the secrets of his 
own heart, and charging his words with his 
whole inner history. Curiously enough, a 
somewhat similar method of developing a nar- 
rative action has been largely employed by the 
poet of our own day who has done most to 
sound the depths of spiritual experience, 
Robert Browning, whose so-called " dramatic 
method " is merely his deliberately adopted 
way of bodying forth at once the inner and 
outer elements of a story, — 

. "By making speak, myself kept out of view, 

Sordelfo, be- The very man as he was wont to do, 

ginning. ^^ j eavm g y OU ^ Q sa y ^g rest f or hj m . » 

and every student of Browning will testify to 
the wonderful vividness with which each one 
of his chosen characters is made to live a chap- 
ter of his life before our eyes. 

But if so much is conceded to the dramatic 
element, why not frankly call the poem a 
drama ? Well, I am not disposed to quarrel 
about the terms in which we are to designate 
its form ; either term, epic or drama, has to be 
accommodated to a new application. Yet why 
call it a drama, and deny the term to the Pla- 
tonic dialogues ? for it is in these, I think, that 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 2$ 

our poem, as to structure, finds its nearest 
dramatic parallel. It is because the action, 
though to a degree dramatic in form, moves 
for the most part independently of 

. . r r Jtisiifica- 

the impact of mood on mood or of Hon, never- 

theless, of 

character on character, that I am un- the term 

epic. 

able to regard the poem as in the 
truest sense dramatic ; and on the other hand, 
it is because of the vigorous onset of spiritual 
forces under the dialogue, self-moved even 
more than set in motion from other minds, val- 
iantly meeting hostile doubts and trials, mak- 
ing memorable conquests in integrity and 
faith, that I discern in this testing and triumph 
of Job a predominating epic strain. Is it less 
truly epic than that conflict of temptation in the 
wilderness which Milton has sung, — 

. Milton* s 

a conflict whose weapons were pier- Paradise 
cing words and whose battle-ground 
was the soul of the Son of Man ? I use the 
term epic, because, whatever its technical >type, 
the poem is the embodiment of a veritable epos, 
of a history which, whether real or invented, lies 
at the very basis of pure religion, full of sig- 
nificance for its integrity and perpetuity. What 
I mean by this may be seen illustrated IUustrated 
in the Prometheus Bound of ^schy- %£SSf 
lus, which is truly the embodiment of Bound ' 
a national epos, albeit in dramatic form. In that 



26 THE BOOK OF JOB 

poem as in this, quite apart from the dialogue 
or narrative manner of presentation, which is 
determined by the vogue of the age and the 
conditions under which the work is published, 
our paramount interest is centred in the legend 
or saga which lies at the foundation, in the he- 
roic action which glorifies some revered name 
of universal tradition, and in the national or 
religious significance of the whole. These are 
marks of the epos ; and these are what give its 
basal literary character to the Book of Job. 
That the poem before us was not the pure 
invention of its author, but founded on 

The legend- 

ary basis of a Job legend or tradition, is the con- 

thepoem. . . 

elusion most in accord with what we 
know of the literary ways of the Hebrew writ- 
ers. They wrote with practical objects in view, 
appealing from real life to real life, and not in 
order to please the world with the power or fe- 
licity of their literary achievements. Having 
a history marvelously rich in life-lessons, whose 
details and spirit had been faithfully instilled 
by fathers into generations of sons, they had 
a store of material which would ill brook to be 
supplanted by mere efforts of the fancy ; es- 
pecially when, as in this case, the past was to 
influence the destiny of the future. It is into 
this treasure heap of tradition that Ezekiel 
dips, when, in threatening calamity on the rec- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 2*J 

reant land, he says, " Though these three 
men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in Ezek ieixiv. 
it, they should not deliver but their I4 ' 
own souls by their righteousness, saith the 
Lord God." This we know because the Book 
of Daniel was not yet written : Daniel was a 
widely revered name ; Noah was an historic 
name; and this mention of Job seems to de- 
rive its significance more from an age-filling 
tradition than from a book. 

" When we inquire, however," says Professor 
Davidson, "what elements of the 
book really belong to the tradition, a job(dam- 

, n . , „ , . bridge Bible 

definite answer can hardly be given, for schools), 
A tradition could scarcely exist which 
did not contain the name of the hero, and the 
name 'Job' is no doubt historical. A mere 
name, however, could not be handed down with- 
out some circumstances connected with it ; and 
we may assume that the outline of the tradition 
included Job's great prosperity, the unparal- 
leled afflictions that befell him, and possibly 
also his restoration. Whether more was em- 
braced may be uncertain." It was probably a 
tradition full enough so that to those who were 
familiar with it, as to the Apostle 

t > t 111 • i ^ r James v. ir. 

James s later age, could be said, " Ye 

have heard of the patience of Job, and have 

seen the end of the Lord." Further to uri- 



28 THE BOOK OF JOB 

ravel the various threads, traditional and other, 
of which the book is woven together, could 
serve no practical end. Suffice it for us that 
out of these simple materials, because they 
represent a spiritual experience that taxes the 
whole gamut of expression to utter, some un- 
known author, grandly regardless of the tech- 
nical restraints of drama or lyric or narrative, 
has given to the ages what we may regard as 
the Hebrew national Epic, expressed in a style 
and spirit peculiarly Hebrew. 

Every nation according to its genius. We 

often speak of that idea of symmetry 

job an expo- and beauty whose evolution seems to 

nent of the , p 

national have been the mission ot the Greeks 

ge7iius. 

in the world, and of that idea of law 
and organism which we get from the Romans. 
Not only through their art and their institu- 
tions, but also through the spirit of their liter- 
ature, these nations have impressed upon the 
world their distinctive character. We know 
also that no other nations have ever approached 
the Hebrews in their genius for apprehending 
spiritual truth. If the Hebrews were to give 
to the world an epic, would it be a story of 
battle and bloodshed, or of strange adventures 
beyond the seas ? These by no means repre- 
sent their national character. For the most 
'genuine expression of their life you must look 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 29 

under the surface, in the soul, where worship 
and aspiration and prophetic faith come face 
to face with God. And what epos could more 
truly gather into itself the most sacred ideal of 
such a nation than this story of Job, the man 
in whom was wrought the supreme test of what 
it is to be perfect and upright, who on his ash- 
heap, a veritable Hebrew Prometheus, contin- 
ued honest with himself, true to what he saw 
in the world, loyal to what his soul told him 
was divine, until the storm was past and his 
foe shrank baffled away ? Is not such a theme 
worth singing ? 

The Epic of the Inner Life, — by this name 
we may designate the book before 

A , . n . The Epic 

us. As such its significance is more of the inner 

Life. 

than Hebrew ; it extends far beyond 
national bounds to the universal heart of hu- 
manity ; nay, it is with strange freshness and 
application to the spiritual maladies of this 
nineteenth century of Christ that the old Arab 
chief's struggles and victories come to us, as 
we turn the ancient pages anew. 

111. 

That the narrative type of structure, which 
is the basis of the poem, also preponderates 
throughout, or at least is present in every part, 
so far as the peculiar poetic style will admit, 



30 THE BOOK OF JOB 

is a not unreasonable conjecture. Let us see 
///. con- ^ ^is is so, by tracing what I have 
TontZuttf ventured to call its action, with spe- 
o/itsparts. c j a j re f erence t it s continuity and 

the interdependence of its parts. 

Job, a man perfect and upright, who has 

always feared God and shunned evil, 

and basis of and whose righteous life has always 

the action. . 

reaped its natural fruitage of honor 
and prosperity, is suddenly overwhelmed with 
the deepest afflictions ; one stroke following 
hard upon another — loss of property, loss of 
children, and finally the most loathsome and 
painful bodily disease — until he can only long 
for death. At first he accepts his afflictions 
devoutly, attributing no injustice to God, and 
sharply rebuking any suggestion of disloyalty ; 
but as months of wretchedness pass, and 
friends bring up in vain the commonplaces of 
explanation which he and they have hitherto 
held in common, his musing spirit finds itself 
girt round with a darkness and mystery wholly 
impenetrable. It is a problem which men's 
wisdom has not yet solved. Consider the diffi- 
culties into which he is plunged. Of 
involved in the scene in heaven, where Satan has 

Jotfs case. 

moved the Lord " to destroy him 
causelessly/' Job has of course no knowledge. 
No Satanic agency is visible; all the data 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 3 I 

point to God as the direct inflicter of the 
stroke. The four calamities occurring in one 
day cannot be an accident ; the fire from 
heaven and the wind from beyond the desert 
cannot be casualties of this world, like the vio- 
lence of men ; and, most indubitable of all, his 
disease, elephantiasis, is universally regarded 
as the most dread sign of God's immediate vis- 
itation. It is taken for granted by all, Job, his 
wife, and his friends, that he is for some reason 
the object of God's wrath. Here, then, is Job's 
difficulty : God is punishing him, — and for 
what ? He is conscious of no sm to deserve 
it ; his u heart does not reproach one of his 
days." It is strange that he should perish 
without knowing his crime ; strange, too, that 
the heavens should be shut to every call of his 
for explanation. To be so treated is to be shut 
off from the "friendship of God," which has 
always been the most cherished blessing of his 
life. But this is only the beginning of his dis- 
tress. If he, a righteous man, is treated as if 
he were wicked, then the world is out of joint ; 
the bounds of right and wrong, of justice and 
iniquity, are wholly confused ; and where is 
the truth of things ? Are the powers that 
work unseen arrayed after all on the side of 
evil, and against godliness ? Is it falsehood 
that wins in this universe ? Such is the laby- 



32 THE BOOK OF JOB 

rinth of " dreadful and hideous thoughts " 
through which Job must grope his way to the 
light. 

The course that Job takes is set off very sug- 
gestively, by contrast, in the characters of the 
dramatis persona with whom he is associated. 

Of these, the most deeply contrasted to Job 
contrast be- is Satan, the Accuser, at whose insti- 

tween Job , . , 

and Satan, gation the trial oi his integrity is 
made. In studying this character, we need to 
dismiss from our minds, for the time being, 
the Satanic traits that come to light in other 
parts of Scripture, and confine ourselves to 
the record before us. The being who appears 
Satan's h ere so familiarly among the sons of 
character, God is no Miltonic Satan, no mon- 
ster of black malignity and unconquerable ha- 
tred. The most striking trait of his character 
seems to be simply restlessness, unquiet. In 
his " roaming to and fro in the earth and 
walking up and down in it," and in his eager- 
ness to try experiments with Job, we are re- 
minded of that New Testament evil spirit, 
who being cast out of a man " walketh through 
see Luke dry places, seeking rest." A home- 
■*'■ 24 ' less, unquiet spirit : may we not say, 

then, that in Satan our author portrays a spirit 
unanchored to any allegiance, a spirit who has 
lost his moorings ? Being attached to no 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 33 

Father of spirits, to steady him and give him 
principle, all his regards centre in self- gratifi- 
cation ; having no goal beyond the present, 
he lives simply to appease the restlessness of the 
moment. So we find him, naturally enough, a 
mocking, detracting, reckless, impudent being, 
observing and criticising all things, yet sympa- 
thizing with none, caring for no sufferings, 
responding to no deep movements of heart, — 
what Goethe calls a " schalk." x For a being 
like this, such a thing as disinterested good- 
ness is simply non-existent ; he has no faculty 
to comprehend it. When he asks the sarcastic 
question, " Doth Job fear God for nought ? " 
and when he lays the wager with God to sever 
the patriarch from his allegiance, he is merely 
speaking out of his own shallow selfishness, 
and interpreting men as good or evil, just as 
it happens, for a price. In polar contrast to 
this stands Job. His soul is so 

JoWs con- 

deeply anchored to what is good trusted 

r J & traits. 

and true that the idea of barter, of 
work and wages, finds no room in the calcu- 
lation, — nay, so deeply that he is forced to 

1 Goethe's imitation of this opening scene of the Book of 
Job, in his Prologue to Faust, brings out the traits of Satan's 
character in several suggestive ways, which will be traced 
more particularly in the notes to this section of the transla- 
tion. 



34 THE BOOK OF JOB 

cut loose from what his friends say of God, to 
take his life in his hand and remonstrate with 
God himself, as he looks out on a confused 
world; and thus, putting uttermost faith in 
goodness, he " voyages through strange seas of 
thought alone," finding radiant landing-places 
of faith one after another, until a new world 
is discovered in which he comes to see that 
being anchored to the good and true is being 
anchored to God after all. 

The other contrast is afforded by the friends 
Contrast w h° come to visit him. They repre- 
anTkl Joh sent, with its outcome in character, 
friends. the kind of philosophy that the whole 

devout world, Job with the rest, has hitherto 
held, a philosophy which ages of wisdom and 
reflection have evolved. A philosophy, more- 
over, that through a long period of 
advocates of national prosperity has crystallized 

the Wisdom . r 

philosophy: into a very comtortable and conve- 

compare be- 

io>w,pp.Q2, nient creed, well adapted to iair wea- 

sqq. 

ther and to the routines of life. That 
God deals with men by an unchanging and in 
the main calculable law, — good receiving its 
sure reward in prosperity, wickedness receiv- 
ing its unfailing desert in woe, — this we may 
depend upon as the principle on which to 
build our life. It is a good belief by which to 
key men up to law and duty, a very effectual 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 35 

police regulation for the world. But the fierce 
light of Job's affliction, so strange and y obtakes 
undeserved, opens his eyes to • see in ^wildom 
this philosophy imperfections hitherto doctrine - 
unsuspected. First of all he sees that it rests 
on an incomplete induction of facts : for there 
are afflicted righteous, — he is one, — and there 
are unpunished wicked, filling the land with 
their evil deeds. Then, secondly, — and here 
is where his self-forgetting integrity evinces 
its insight, — he sees that this belief may be 
so held, nay, is actually so held by these very 
friends, as to become merely a refined sort of 
work-and-wages theory. Serve God, and you 
will prosper ; if woes come, betokening God's 
displeasure, turn to God anew, and prosper 
again. If this were all, — and it very nearly 
sums up the friends' creed, — we might with 
only too much reason ask, Does such a be- 
liever fear God for nought ? But to Job's 
quickened spiritual sense this is not all. The 
old imperfect wisdom must be lifted to a higher 
than worldly plane. In the black shadows that 
surround him come flashes of unspeakable 
things, new resting-places for faith, truths that 
the unchastened soul cannot appreciate. Here, 
then, is the contrast : the friends, who have 
never been quickened by suffering, are conven- 
tional, speculative believers, their God a tradi- 



36 THE BOOK OF JOB 

tional God, remote, undelighted-in, their creed 
a hide-bound system, essentially worldly and 
selfish, for the sake of which they deny both 
the righteousness of Job and the mystery of 
evil that is in the world ; Job, whose affliction 
has startled him with the sense that God's face 
is darkened, turns loyally to God as flowers 
turn to the sun, is in agony of doubt until he 
can identify God with goodness and love, and 
seeking supremely after light, reality, personal 
communion, advances with increasing insight 
until at the end he can say, " I had heard of 
Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine 
eye seeth Thee." 

The voyage of Job's soul to God, his anchor- 
The action a £ e anc ^ ^is li&k^ which is the action 
f ^t s ^f awed foreshadowed in the foregoing con- 
contrasts. trasts, we are now ready to trace 
somewhat in detail. 

The first feeling of a soul thus plunged into 
How yob undeserved misery we can readily 
^hellTin divine, — thesenseof utter bewilder- 
words ' ment. This is the feeling that finds 

expression in Job's first speech, wherein he 
opens his mouth and curses his day. 

Section zV. _ T _ . r .. r . -, 

Weariness of lite, passionate desire 
for death with its rest and its oblivion, which 
are the emotions that shape his utterance, are 
after all but the surface-waves of his agitation ; 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 37 

its deep cause lies in his feeling that his life 
has lost its guidance and direction. He is like 
one whose way, hitherto free and clear, is sud- 
denly shut in by cloud and darkness. 

" Wherefore giveth He light to the wretched, „ . 

, , . . . . Section 11. 

And life to the bitter in soul ? . . . 41,42,4.7,48. 

To a man whose way is hid, 

And whom God hath hedged in ? " 

It is worthy of remark that Job's question is 
not, why he is punished, but why a life so bit- 
ter and dark should have been given at all. 
Punishment implies desert, or if not desert, 
then injustice. To have given his affliction 
the name of punishment would have set him at 
once in the attitude of seeking for its cause, 
either in himself or in God. That the cause 
should be in himself, either as wicked, or even 
as unconsciously corrupt through the innate 
sinfulness of men, has never entered his mind*; 
on the contrary, one great element of his be- 
wilderment is his consciousness of the watch- 
ful solicitude with which he has hitherto led a 
life of faithful integrity before God : — 

" For I feared a fear, and it hath overtaken me ; _ . 

_ . Section 11. 

And what I dreaded is come upon me. 51-54- 

I was not heedless, nor was I at ease, 

Nor was I at rest, — yet trouble came." 

No more is he ready to fasten the cause, even 
by remote implication, upon God. His friends 



38 THE BOOK OF JOB 

have not been at him yet with their theodicies ; 
and Job is unwilling to theorize or to accuse 
where there is no ray of light. The only out- 
let for his overburdened heart, in this opening 
speech, is just to sigh over a life that contains 
no reason for living. 

Thus, with the mournful comfort that sym- 
Effecto/ pathizing friends are still about him 
7 oft S he peech t0 share his woe, Job pours out the 

friends. ^^ fulJness Q f his g()uL Ag he 

pauses, however, he is surprised to find, not 
murmurs of sympathy, but silence and averted 
faces. The three friends have scented evil. 
Here is a man who when the stroke comes is 
not all submission, does not own that it is 
clear and deserved. He must be set right, let 
friendship stand or fall. Accordingly, with 
very conciliatory words, as of one who would 
do an unpleasant duty in the gentlest way, 
Eliphaz, the eldest and wisest of the three, 
takes him in hand, and reminds him of his in- 
consistency : — 

" If one essay a word with thee, wilt thou be offended ? 
Section Hi. Yet who can forbear speaking ? 
2 ~9- Behold, thou hast admonished many, 

And thou hast strengthened feeble hands ; 

Thy words have confirmed the faltering, 

And bowing knees hast thou made strong ; 

But now it is come upon thee, — and thou faintest ; 

It toucheth thee, and thou art confounded." 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 39 

Then he goes on to read Job a lecture, in 
which he presents — in general terms, E i ipkaz ^ s 
and leaving Job to make his own ap- dlscourse - 
plications — the prevailing doctrine, hitherto 
unquestioned, of sin and retribution. It is the 
most elaborate discourse of the friends, and 
anticipates substantially their whole argument, 
Elihu's included. It is the argument that 
everything in the world comes by justice and 
desert ; that punishment has its sufficient 
cause in sin, open or secret ; and that thus in 
God's wrath we may read and measure man's 
wickedness. This is what Job has always 
accepted as the fundamental principle of the 
Hebrew philosophy ; nor is it to be called un- 
true, so much as inadequate and aside from 
the present case. Of course it can have but 
one implication. To talk of sin and punish- 
ment now, though in ever so general terms, is 
merely to accuse Job of sin. It is meaningless 
otherwise. So little is this implication dis- 
guised that forthwith Job is solemnly admon- 
ished to make his peace with God — as if he 
had ever been at war with God ! But there 
is the tell-tale leprosy ; the friends cannot 
get over that. If it does not mean that 
some one has sinned, it seems to mean some- 
thing about God which it were impiety to 
think of. 



4.0 THE BOOK OF JOB 

The three friends all ply Job in turn with 
essentially the same interpretation 

Essential r -\ i • 

identity of oi the case, their one obiect being at 

the three ' . ' * , ,J? 

friends' ar- all hazards to justify God. They 

guments. . - . 

vary mainly in the manner of enfor- 
cing their views. Eliphaz, who assumes the 
calmest and most judicial tone, draws 

Eliphaz. . 

his arguments from the universal 
"natural law in the spiritual world : " — 

il Bethink thee now : who that was guiltless hath perished ? 
Section Hi. And where have the upright been cut off ? 
I2 ~ J 5- As I have seen, — they that plough iniquity, 

And that sow wickedness, reap the same." 

He has also a deep spiritual view, revealed 
Section m. to him as he says by a vision, of the 
22 ~ 43 ' corruption that lurks unseen in the 

heart, rendering even angels unclean, and 
making desert of punishment an inevitable ac- 
companiment of the creature. Such Calvinism 
before Calvin as this, which reappears more 
than once in the friends' arguments, is the 
hardest blow directed at Job's sturdy con- 
sciousness of innocence ; it " poisons 
the wells." Bildad, whose anger is 
roused by Job's assumption of righteousness 
and complaint to God, emphasizes the perfect 
justice that orders all things : — 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 4 1 

" Will God pervert the right ? 

Or will the Almighty pervert justice ? Section v. 

If thy children have sinned against Him, 4~7> 

So hath He given them over into the hand of their trans- 
gression," — 

and corroborates his words by quoting from 
the wisdom of the ancients. Zophar, 
who is still more incensed by Job's 
passionate remonstrances with God and call 
for explanation, urges the folly of seeking the 
mystery of God's ways : — 

" But oh that God might indeed speak, 

And open His lips against thee, Section vii. 

And show thee the hidden things of wisdom, — 8 ~ l8 - 

For there is fold on fold to truth ; — 

Then know thou, that God abateth to thee of thine iniquity. 

Canst thou find out the secret of God? 
Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ? 
Heights of heaven ; — what canst thou do ? 
Deeper than Sheol ; — what canst thou know ? 
Longer than the earth is its measure, 
And broader than the sea." 

So by their triply bulwarked argument the 
friends seem to take away all of Job's stand- 
ing-ground. If he falls back on what his heart 
assures him of his innocence, he is confronted 
by the unescapable corruption of the creature ; 
if he besieges the heavens for some explana- 
tion of his undeserved misery, he is driven 
back by the mystery which forbids profane 
approach. All that is permitted to him is to 



42 THE BOOK OF JOB 

bless the brazen hardness by which he is en- 
compassed, and to call it justice. 

To these arguments of the friends Job does 
Before an- not reply at length until all have 
s yoTgte S spoken. He is musing onward in a 
f to e his°mon way of his own. Yet he marks what 
thoughts. they say, and it has its effect in 
kindling his own thoughts, which in this part 
of the poem rise to their highest intensity. 
Nor does it occur to him to deny their asser- 
tions : to what they say he answers, " Of a 
truth I know it is so, — who knoweth not 
things like these ? " And yet from the begin- 
ning their well-rehearsed words are strangely 
insipid ; familiar to him always, they have sud- 
denly shriveled into the commonest common- 
place, with no vitality, no power to reach the 
source of his trouble : — 

" Doth the wild ass bray over the fresh grass ? 
Section iv. Or loweth the ox over his fodder ? 

9- J 4> Can it be eaten — what is tasteless, unsalted ? 

Or is there savor in the white of an egg ? 

My soul refuseth to touch ! 

They are as loathsome food to me." 

It breaks his heart, too, to see his friends turn- 
ms plea /or ^ n S away from him, just at this time 
friendship. w i ltn a friend's open heart would be 
a haven of refuge. Job has evidently built a 
great deal on the love of friends ; and as this 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 43 

fails him we shall see, in the sequel, how he 
builds more, but on foundations that are out of 
sight. Plaintively he beseeches them See section 
to return and show him wherein he w - 48 ' 61 ' 
has erred, to look with brotherly eyes into his 
case. But there is no comfort in them. They 
are judging him by the visitation that has 
overtaken him, and think that they are justify- 
ing God by withholding sympathy where God 
has apparently withdrawn favor. It is a case 
wherein they deem that they must choose be- 
tween God and friendship ; but strange it is 
to Job that their attitude toward him should 
be determined by an intellectual theory rather 
than by that natural brotherly affection which 
is "likest God within the soul." 

Meanwhile, one thing is left to Job : to be 
honest with himself, to respect his Hisonere . 
own convictions of right, to cherish ZlyZlth "" 
the integrity that has always been his himsel ^ 
life. The desire to leave this intact and be- 
yond the reach of temptation sharpens even 
his longing for death : — 

"Oh that my request might come ! 

And that God would grant my longing Section iv* 

That it would please God to crush me ; 15- 21 ' 

That He would loose His hand and cut me off. 
For then it would still be my comfort, — 
Yea, I should exult in pain, though He spare not, — 
That I have not denied the words of the Holy One." 



44 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Here, then, at the outset Job has struck the 
key-note ; has reached the intrenchment where 
the battle is to be fought out to the end : loy- 
see section a lty to ^is own ideal of godlike and 
iv. 22-27. holy. It is with trembling conscious- 
ness of his own weakness that he sees the long 
conflict before him ; but to live necessitates it. 
As the friends go on with their pitiless ex- 
position of God's dealings with men, 

Job think- \ _ . _ . r 1 r « - 

ing order J ob is becoming aware 01 the full sig- 

out of chaos. . 

nmcance of his case. It is a season 
of testing, when his own state, physical and 
spiritual, the doctrines in which he has always 
believed, and the interpretations that the 
friends are pressing upon him, all come up in 
a disordered review before his mind and grad- 
ually crystallize into a definite conclusion. 
Eliphaz has already recounted what was re- 
section ui. vealed to him by vision, and intimated 
44 ~ 47 ' that Job, by his anger, is losing the 

ability to see as the immortals see. But Job will 
not let himself be cut off from the judgment 

section iv. °f ^ s own case - ^ e avers that in 
5q ~ bl - calling himself righteous he is speak- 

ing out of a spiritual perception of good and 
evil that is still sane and true. Strong in such 
section iv. confidence, he addresses himself to 
100-106. t j ie en jg ma before him. He cannot 
understand why that unknown sin of his, if in- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 45 

deed he is guilty, a sin which at the worst 
is so venial that forgiveness may be sought 
almost as a right, should be pursued relent- 
lessly, like a heinous crime, down to death. 
Then, too, why will such a God give no ac- 
count, no explanation, no standard for man to 
live by ? Bildad says that nevertheless God 
is just ; but in such a mystery as this Thesp{rito/ 
where is justice to be found? If ***"* 
this is justice, why, then justice means God's 
arbitrary will, God's infinite caprice ; and the 
only way one can recognize justice is by noting 
which way God's favor happens to set. No 
man can maintain his ways before such a tri- 
bunal. Let him have never so righteous a 
cause, it is but the turn of a hand for God to 
prove him perverse. Nay, and into what 
hideous confusion does such a government 
throw the whole world ! No resource left for 
what has been called righteousness ; the bounds 
of good and evil, of right and duty, are wholly 
obliterated. With such a state of things Job 
will not have alliance. Thus, in re- y ^ sever . 
cording his protest against a world lasim z No - 
so governed, he reaches his everlasting No. 1 

1 The expression is adopted from Carlyle, whose chapter 
on The Everlasting Xo, in Sartor Resartus (Book ii., chapter 
vii.), reproduces with remarkable vigor the spirit of Job's pro- 
test. In both Carlyle and Job we trace the same fearlessness 



46 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Nothing can exceed the tremendous energy 
To which °f Job's arraignment of God, as it is 
5 i-tqcorre- given in the ninth chapter. The 
spon whole chapter ought to be cited to 

illustrate it ; here are a few lines : — 

" Is the question of strength, — behold, the Mighty One He ! 

Of judgment, — * Who will set Me a day ? ' 
3^-47? m Were I righteous, mine own mouth would con- 
demn me ; 

Perfect were I, yet would He prove me perverse. 

Perfect I am, — I value not my soul — I despise my life — 

It is all one — therefore I say, 

Perfect and wicked He consumeth alike. 

If the scourge destroyeth suddenly, 

He mocketh at the dismay of the innocent. 

The earth is given over into the hands of the wicked ; 

The face of its judges He veileth ; — 

If it is not He, who then is it ? " 

Nor does he stop with mere censure in the 
third person. Turning directly to God, with 

of death, the same honesty of spirit, the same remonstrance 
against a supposed unrighteous order of things, though Job's 
is the sweeter and more temperate spirit. " Thus," says 
Carlyle, "had the Everlasting No pealed authoritatively 
through all the recesses of my Being, of my Me ; and then 
was it that my whole Me stood up, in native God-created 
majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Pro- 
test, the most important transaction in Life, may that same 
Indignation and Defiance, in ?C psychological point of view, be 
fitly called. The Everlasting No had said : ■ Behold, thou 
art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's) ; ' 
to which my whole Me now made answer : '/am not thine, 
but Free, and forever hate thee ! ' " 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 47 

amazing boldness he brings the Creator him- 
self to that bar of judgment which his stand- 
ard of justice, his sense of the godlike, has 
erected : — 

" Is it beseeming to Thee that Thou shouldst oppress ; 

That Thou shouldst despise the labor of Thy 

1 j Section vi. 

hands, 75-77. 

Whilst Thou shinest on the counsel of the 
wicked ? " 

A sorely bewildered heart it is, bewildered 
by its very integrity, that speaks through these 
burning words ! 

This is the passage, in especial, that com- 
mentators have referred to, when, tak- 

_ ., - . Are Job's 

ing exception to Gods own dictum, words bias- 

, , T phemous. 

they have maintained that Job did 
not always " speak of God the thing that is 
right," but sometimes what is wrong, even 
blasphemous. But consider : Job is not ar- 
raigning that God who is recognized as truth 
and holiness ; rather, he is speaking in the in- 
terests of truth and holiness, against that con- 
ventional God whom his friends have created 
before his eyes out of their arid theologies, the 
God who by His own confession has S ee section 
been " moved against Job to destroy u I03% 
him causelessly/' and of whose mysterious vis- 
itation, whatever its purpose, no man has yet 
found a meaning in which the consciously up- 



48 THE BOOK OF JOB 

right soul can rest. It is the godlike in Job 
rising up in remonstrance against an appar- 
ently misgoverned world. Is it, then, so far out 
of the way ? 

Prometheus, a god, chained on Mount Cau- 
casus, could defy the rage of a god 

Job com- ' J i 

+aredwith whose enmity and supremacy he was 

Prometheus. . J 

destined to outlive ; Job, a mortal 
ready to die on his ash-heap, does not defy, 
does not hate, does not forswear allegiance, 
but sends into the darkness the immortal pro- 
test of the creature against what is ungodlike 
and unjust. I confess the hero of the old He- 
brew epos seems to me the sublimer of the two. 
Thus, by the time two of the friends have 
spoken, their words, combined with Job's an- 
guish and bitter sense of wrong, have pressed 
from him his remonstrance against what he 
must recognize as the unjust order of things. 
As yet he has not called in question the truth 
job's eve* °f what they say. But when the third 
t'Zds^er" friend, Zophar, follows in the same 
ror ' hard strain, with his angry rebuke of 

Job for daring to call himself pure, and for pre- 
suming to pry into the secret of God, Job's 
eyes are suddenly opened. He begins to see 
that they do not know everything after all ; 
that, in fact, their spiritual insight is no more 
to be trusted than his own : — 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 49 

" Of a truth, ye are the people, 
And wisdom will die with you ! s ^° n viiL 

I also have understanding, as well as you ; 
I am not inferior to you ; 
And who knoweth not things like these ? " 

What is true in their argument is not new ; 
the " things like these " are the long-estab- 
lished commonplaces of doctrine. That the 
whole world is God's handiwork ; that when 
He doeth there is no undoing ; that He deals 
with righteous and sinful, with wise and fool- 
ish, with individual and nation, just as He will, 
— these things none will question. Accord- 
ingly, his first answer to them, after section via. 
hearing what all have to say, is to re- 7J ~ j6 ' 
capitulate and indorse their general position, 
summing up with these words : — 

" Behold, all this hath mine eye seen ; 
Mine ear hath heard and understood it well. fffl^ * viii * 
What ye know, that know I also ; 
I am not inferior to you." 

But all this has failed to touch his real issue 
with them. In spite of the abstract what the 
correctness of their doctrine, they are WaT er ~ 
wholly wrong. 

" But ye too, — forgers of lies are ye ; Section viii. 

Patchers-up of nothings are ye all." .*?> 6°- 

For as he sees them maintaining God's jus- 
tice through thick and thin, and denying Job's 
righteousness in order to do it, the thought 



50 THE BOOK OF JOB 

flashes upon him that their term righteousness 
is merely a conventional name for the winning 
side ; they are calling his transparent integrity 
sin, not because what is righteous in their na- 
ture compels them to see it so, but because, 
forsooth, he is a leper. They have found out 
by this affliction which way God's favor seems 
to point, and they are hastening to ally them- 
selves with it and be safe. Such a selfish use 
of God rouses Job's soul to stinging rebuke : — 

" Hear ye now my rebuke, 
Section viii. And listen tQ the charges f my u ps . 

Will ye speak what is wrong, for God ? 
And will ye, for Him, utter deceit ? 
Will ye respect His person, 
Or will ye be special pleaders for God ? 
Would it be well, if He should search you out ? 
Or will ye mock Him, as man mocketh man ? 
He will surely convict you utterly, 
If in secret ye are respecters of persons. 
Shall not His majesty make you afraid, 
And the dread of Him fall upon you ? 1 
Your wise maxims are proverbs of ashes ; 
Your bulwarks turn to bulwarks of clay." 

Thus, piercing by the insight of truth to the 
job's break heart of his friends' life, Job finds 

•with his % 

friends. that they are not serving God for 
nought ; they are shrewdly calculating where 

1 " There is nothing good that is not entirely honest. Bet- 
ter for a man that all the world should grin at him for ever, 
than that, failing in honesty, God should laugh him to scorn 
but only once." (Selkirk, Ethics and ^Esthetics of Modern 
Poetry, p. 87.) 



THE INTRO D UCTOR Y STUD V 5 I 

the chances of reward and prosperity lie, and 
shaping their views of right and wrong accord- 
ingly. This is enough ; no more alliance with 
them. From this point onward Job's attitude 
towards his friends is changed. He no longer 
regards them as wise, nor does he let any more 
words of theirs go unquestioned. Henceforth 
he regards them as spiritually blind, — 

" For their heart hast Thou hid from understand- Section x. 

ing,"- st- 

and treats them with the scorn due to those 
whose pretensions have far outrun their wis- 
dom : — 

"But you — all of you — return ye! and come _ . 

Section x. 
now ! 69, 70. 

For I shall not find a wise man among you." 

He can no more look for help from friends ; 
the question lies henceforth between his soul 
and God. 

Nor has this encounter with the selfishness 
of his friends left Job the man he was. 7oo > sever . 
It has carried him over from the ever- lasiing Yea " 
lasting No to the everlasting Yea. Farewell, 
now, fear and complaining ; farewell trust in 
the outworn maxims of men : face to face with 
death and the worst that his unseen enemy 
can do, Job turns solemnly from his fellows, 
and commits himself anew to the righteous- 
ness that has hitherto been his life, in supreme 



52 THE BOOK OF JOB 

faith that its issue, though at present he sees 
it not, must be salvation : — 

" Be silent ; let me alone ; and speak will I, 

77-84" VUL Let come upon me what wilL 

Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, 

And put my life in my hand ? 

Behold — He may slay me ; I may not hope ; 

But my ways will I maintain to His face. 1 

Nay, that shall be to me also for salvation, 

For no false one shall come into His presence." 

It is an appeal from the God who works in the 
impenetrable darkness without to the God who 
has put holy impulses within, and a trust in 
Compare 1 the guidance of that honest human 
7ohniii.2i. heart w hi c h "condemns him not/' 

" Hear, oh hear my speech, 
83-8™ VUU ^ nc * let m y declaration sound in your ears. 
Behold, now have I set in order my cause ; 
I know that I shall be justified." 

1 To maintain his ways, to be true in the face of God and 
the iron universe to that perfect and upright ideal which has 
hitherto shaped his life, is in Job's soul the supreme impera- 
tive, compared with which the desire for restored health and 
property or any earthly happiness never once comes to men- 
tion. " There is in man a Higher than Love of Happiness : 
he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Bless- 
edness ! Was it not to preach forth this same Higher that 
sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have 
spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and 
through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the 
Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom ? . . . Love not 
Pleasure ; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein 
all contradiction is solved : wherein whoso walks and works 
it is well with him." (Carlvle, Sartor Resartus t B. ii., chap, ix.) 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 53 

This declaration we may regard as the bed- 
rock, so to say, of the Book of Job. To appre- 
ciate what it means for Job to make it, reflect 
that the wisdom of man, the testimony of the 
past, the utterance of trusted friends, have all 
raised their voice in unison with a mysterious 
visitation of God to declare the contrary. Job 
is launching out into the darkness alone, stak- 
ing life and destiny on the belief that the pow- 
ers that work unseen, in spite of inexorable 
appearances, are for righteousness. 

Doth Job fear God for nought ? The sneer 
of Satan is more than answered. 

But having traced the progress of Job's soul 
to this point, let us be clearly aware Estifnate of 
what is done, what remains. And, in J g ° r b e s S p thus 
fact, we find that he still has, as far ' 
Browning expresses it, " all to traverse 'twixt 
hope and despair." The achievement Mainiy „^_ 
that we have noted thus far has been ative ' 
mainly negative. By remonstrance against an 
arbitrary God, and by reaction against the self- 
seeking theology of his friends, he has reached 
a landing-place where he can say, "I know 
that I shall be justified." That is much to 
say ; but how or when ? His suffering remains 
a fact, all too palpable ; he is at the gates of 
death, with no outlook ; and all his importu- 
nate demand for explanation of the mystery is 



54 THE BOOK OF JOB 

but " shouting question after question into the 
Sybil-cave of destiny, and receiving no answer 
but an echo." Where shall he find some pon 
sto whereon to lift the weary weight of the 
problem that presses upon him ? 

To see how, even along with his negative 
remonstrances, he has been taking steps to- 
ward evolving a positive solution, let us turn 
*back a little and trace some elements of the 
poem hitherto unmentioned. 

The problem all comes from his absorbing 
Basis of a quest for that divine presence and 
P t7ono)h?s U ~ communion from which this affliction 

problem. ^ seemed tQ shut him Qut .1 fiut 

I, — to the Almighty would I speak, — I long 
to make plea unto God," is the constant bur- 
den of his desire. Two questions there are, to 
which his mind turns and returns with perti- 
nacious inquiry, and whose answer he must in 
some way find, on his soul's way to God and 
light. In his musings on these questions we 
may trace what may be called Job's positive 
achievements in faith, his impetuous efforts to 
enter the darkness that closes him round and 
create what he sees ought to be. This part of 
the action constitutes its most remarkable and 
significant feature ; it admits us, as it were, 
behind the veil of God's world-plan, where we 
get a glimpse of revelation in the making. 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 55 

And we see therein the part that man plays, 
as co-worker with God ; for what the book be- 
fore us reveals of unseen things comes not 
through the whirlwind ; it reaches us by way 
of that darkened yet loyal and yearning heart 
of Job. 

The first question — implicit, of course — is, 
How to bridge the chasm that has 

The question 

opened between his soul and God? howtoap- 

x . proach God. 

From the beginning of his affliction 
this question has presented itself in various 
forms until it has become agonizing. God has 
fenced up his way, that he cannot pass. To 
his frantic inquiries why he is afflicted, God 
vouchsafes no answer. Then the friends, fail- 
ing him as comforters, go on portraying a God 
who is a grotesque projection of their own 
hard selves, a Being throned above all judg- 
ment, all defense of the creature ; until Job is 
constrained to raise against .such a conception 
his everlasting No. It is in the midst of this 
protest that constructive faith begins to image 
a solution, — negative at first, fond dwelling of 
fancy on a state of things that he must confess 
is not, but how good if it were. It is the idea 
of a Daysman between him and God, who could 
represent the cause of both. 

" For He is not a man, like me, that I should answer Him, 
That we should come together in judgment; 



56 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Nor is there any Daysman between us, 
Section vi. Who might lay his hand on both of us ; 
62-6Q. Who might remove His rod from upon me, 

That the dread of Him should not unman me. 

Then would I speak, and would not fear Him ; 

For as I am now, I am not myself." 

How necessary he considers to be the office 
that a Daysman should fulfill is seen in the 
request that he urges, as soon as his solemn 
committal to his righteousness brings him to a 
point where, having "set in order his cause," 
he can address himself definitively to God : — 

" Only these two things do not Thou unto me, — 
Section viii. Then will I not hide myself from Thy face ; — 
97-96. Remove Thou Thy hand from upon me, 

And let not Thy terror unman me ; 
Then call Thou, and I will answer Thee, 
Or I will speak, and return Thou answer to me." 

Here is the need, the feeling of which has 
evidently sunk deep into Job's heart. If only 
there were in God something like man to ap- 
peal to ! 

The second question, or questioning, centres 
Theqnes- about the enigma of death. Like 
tiono/ death. many a perplexed soul after him, Job 
has to beat his wings against the barriers of 
the grave. Even if he were a transgressor, 
the mystery is that God will not " look away 
from him," will not forgive his sins and leave 
him alone. Why pursue him so cruelly, if he is 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 57 

destined so soon to drop into "the jaws of 
vacant darkness and to cease ? " In this very 
fact that God watches and judges such a 
" driven leaf " as man, and pursues him out of 
the world, there is a strange inconsistency. 
The care seems so out of proportion to the 
object ; it is like bending all the forces of the 
universe to pick up a straw. Who shall solve 
such a discrepancy ? Yet stay ; here is what 
would be a solution, if it were only true, which, 
alas, he cannot say: suppose man should live 
again after death, as the tree that is cut down 
sprouts anew ! 

" Oh that Thou wouldst hide me in the grave, 
Wouldst keep me secret till Thy wrath is past, Section viiL 
Wouldst set me a time, and remember me ! I 37~ I 44- 

If a man die — might he live again ? 
All the days of my service would I wait, 
Until my renewal came ; 
Thou wouldst call, and I would answer ; 
Thou wouldst yearn after the work of Thy hands ! " 

This solution, like the other, is suggested only 
negatively, only as a radiant fancy, at first ; but 
both are germinating seeds, and when we meet 
them again they will have grown, by a kind of 
unconscious cerebration on Job's part, into 
greater things. 

So much has Job achieved, in protesting and 
creating, by the time the three friends have 



58 THE BOOK OF JOB 

spoken once. They are of course moved to 
summary answer ; but it makes little difference 
tTtftands now what they say. It is not so cer- 
% section tain to Job as it once was that they 

have the secret of wisdom. Until 
they all have spoken again, he does not address 
himself to their arguments at all, being en- 
gaged in exploring the new region that his 
questioning and his faith have opened. Let 
us first follow him. 

Eliphaz having spoken a second time, Job, 
Examina-^ stopping for only a word in scorn of 
^ordslo^ 3 his unavailing speech, turns to the 

ever-present subject of his affliction. 
So severe, so pitiless, so inveterate is his an- 
guish, that he can only count its inflicter as 
his enemy ; and that enemy he can da no 
other than identify with God. He seems to 
tax the power of language to its utmost to 
job's faith portray the deadly conflict that God 
aSSSLZ is waging with him. Yet, by a 
high " strange antinomy, he draws steadily 

nearer to God for refuge. The very whirl- 
wind and tempest of his remonstrance seems 
only to lay bare more and more the inner 
deeps of his essential godliness. Nay, he 
seems almost to divide God against Himself, 
to set God the Advocate over against God the 
Chastiser, in his eager confidence that his hu- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 59 

man ideals and affections must be represented 
on high, and that he must have a Friend who 
is the friend of righteousness. 

" Earth, cover not thou my blood, 
And let my cry have no resting-place ! Section x. 

Even now, behold, in heaven is my Witness, 4*-48- 
And mine Advocate is on high. 
My friends are my scorners, 
But unto God mine eye poureth tears, 
That He would plead for man with God, 
As the son of man for his neighbor. ,, 

Is not this the Daysman, whom Job was so de- 
spairingly dreaming of a little while S ee section 
ago, now no longer in fancy but in full w ' ° 4 ' 
assurance ? Job has advanced from despair to 
confidence ; he has a representative on high. 

But that equally obtrusive fact of death re- 
curs : here he stands, with an Advo- 
cate in heaven, but with his life's rm/S^H 
plans broken off and the eternal 
darkness at hand. 



of death. 



" If I have any hope, the grave is my house ; 

I have spread out my bed in the darkness ; s J$° n *' 

To corruption I have said, < My father thou ! ■ 
* My mother, and my sister ! ' — to the worm. 

And where is now my hope ? 

Yea, my hope — who shall discover it ? 

Will the bars of Sheol fall down, 

When together there is rest in the dust ? " 

Here he pauses while Bildad makes his second 



60 THE BOOK OF JOB 

speech ; and then, with the recurring thought 
section xii. °^ God's enmity, comes upon him the 
12-v crushing consciousness that his soul 

is alone, alone in the ruins of a life ; friends, 
brethren, wife, kinsfolk, servants, all have for- 
saken him. One despairing cry he sends 
forth, — 

" Have pity on me, have pity on me, O ye my 
Section X ii. ^^ 

For the hand of God hath touched me ! " 

and then all at once he breaks out into that 
avowal which for all the ages since has re- 
mained the supreme utterance of the 

The Re- 
deemer pas- Book of Job, which gathers into one 

sage* 

mighty assurance the solution of all 
his problems, the final reach of his aspiring 
faith, revealing in one view the Advocate on 
high, the vindication beyond death, God his 
restored friend, — and binding all together 
with the exultant word, I know. 

" Oh that now my words were written ! 
S* c J™ n x^ oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 
That, with iron pen, and with lead, 
They were graven in the rock, for ever ! 

I know that my Redeemer liveth ; 
That He shall stand, survivor, over the dust ; 
And after my skin is gone, they will rend this body, 
And I, from my flesh, shall see God. 
Whom I shall see, I, for myself ; 
Whom mine eyes shall behold, a stranger no more. 
For this my reins consume within me ! " 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 6 1 

As helping on toward this supreme landing- 
place of Job's faith, consider what a The idea a j 
part the idea of friendship has played. f [ n ie t n h fBo P ok 
It is one of the leading, though less o/7ob ' 
obtrusive, motifs of the poem. Just in propor- 
tion as the friends failed him, — as they be- 
came deceitful like a dried-up brook, as they 
would not turn back and acknowledge his in- 
tegrity as it was, as they turned from compan- 
ions to scorners, as they persecuted him like 
gods, — just in that proportion, along with his 
faith in the triumph of righteousness, Job's 
faith images also a triumph of love, a finding 
of divine friendship, until one strong element 
of this last declaration is his assertion that 
some time God will be "a stranger no more. ,, 
It exemplifies Tennyson's description, in "The 
Two Voices," of man struggling through dark- 
ness to find the meaning of his mysterious en- 
dowments : — 

" He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, „, 

...,,.. ., , , Tennyson, 

And thro thick veils to apprehend The Two 

A labor working to an end." Voices. 

The struggle is over. From this point on- 
ward Job no more inquires into God's How much 

is settled by 

mysterious enmity and remoteness, JoVs know 

J ledge of a 

nor into the unsolved enigma of Redeemer. 
death. He has laid up these questions in 



62 THE BOOK OF JOB 

that future where life's problems are all an- 
swered. 1 

But there remains the present world, the 
world that all our experiences move 

Return to . . 

the friends' in, with its perplexing facts ; and the 

arguments. . . ° 

mends in the meanwhile are saying 
about it things that demand reply. Let us re- 
turn to them. 

They are naturally enough angered at being 

treated as spiritually blind, and at 

See ■, for ex- _ 

ample, m sec- having their wise maxims contemned. 
On their side, too, they regard Job's 
words, so daring in remonstrance, so importu- 
nate in inquiry, as exceedingly dangerous, irrev- 
erent, blasphemous. " Nay," says Eliphaz, — 

" Nay, and thou bringest piety to nought, 
Section ix. And ] essenest devotion before God ; 

• For thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth, 
And thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 
Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I ; 
And thy lips testify against thee." 

Their anger against Job, together with their 

1 Surprise has often been expressed that Job, having 
reached such prophetic certitude of blessedness beyond this 
life, does not make more of .the idea in his succeeding argu- 
ment. I think it is to be explained partly on the ground that 
this is an idea not argued out but believed in, and partly 
because Job goes on to other things not requiring such a 
solution. And so much may be said for the potency of the 
Redeemer idea, that from this point the doubts that have 
hitherto oppressed him absolutely disappear. 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 6$ 

reactionary impulse to put their arguments in 
the directest contrast to him, leads 

... , i r Namely, in 

them, m this second round ot sections **., 

. xi. y andxiii. 

speeches, into intemperate, unconsid- 
ered language. However his piety may seem 
to be tottering to its fall, they will declare 
against wickedness so that none can misunder- 
stand or misinterpret their position with refer- 
ence to it. In the lurid pictures that all in 
turn give of the awful fate of the wicked, it 
seems to me the writers obvious intention to 
make the friends overreach themselves by as- 
sertions which, though not without a nucleus 
of truth, are so exaggerated as to be gro- 
tesquely false to observed facts. Their posi- 
tion amounts to willful denial of what, if they 
will but open their eyes, they cannot but 
see. 

As in his first answer to them, Job waits till 
all have spoken, and he has drawn y ob > san . 
their fire, so to speak; then he turns SSS^T* 
upon them. Not in anger, — the ££*£« 
problem is too awful for that, — but XIV ' 
in shuddering amazement, Job portrays to his 
friends what indeed is palpable to every one 
who will be honest with himself and the world : 
the wicked prospering, becoming old, and dy- 
ing in peace, apparently just as secure and 
just as favored as the righteous. 



64 THE BOOK OF JOB 

" They fill out their days in weal ; 

Section xiv. And in a moment they sink down to the grave. 

24-29- And yet they said unto God, ' Depart from us ; 

The knowledge of Thy ways we desire not. 

What is the Almighty, that we should serve Him ? 

And what gain we, if we pray to Him ? ' " 

Nor does he own this because he inclines to 
their ways : — 

Section xiv. " Behold not in their hand is their weal ; 

30, 31. The counsel of the wicked — be it far from 

me!" 

it is mere honesty to facts that compels the 
confession. The friends have let their im- 
agination riot in terrific descriptions of the 
death of the wicked, and of the perpetual fear 
that paralyzes their lives, in contrast to the 
tranquil security of the righteous ; but to Job 
it is the absolute equality of righteous and 
wicked before God, so far as this life reveals, 
that is so inexplicable : — 

" Shall any teach knowledge unto God, — 
Section xiv. Him — who judgeth them that are high ? 
43-52. One dieth in the fullness of his strength, 

All at ease and quiet, — 

His vessels full of milk, 

And the marrow of his bones well moistened ; 

And another dieth with a bitter soul, 

And hath never tasted of good. 

Together they lie down, in the dust, 

And the worm spreadeth a covering over them." 

This is his answer to them, in which he shows 
them how entirely a figment of the mind is 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 65 

their theory. So strongly has this view seized 
upon his soul that, stopping for only a partial 
reply to Eliphaz's third speech, he goes on to 
give, in calmer mood, a detailed pic- 

Namely, in 

ture of what he has already outlined, section xvu 

. . 34-9 1 ' 
the world apparently void of divine 

judgment, and filled with a perfect impunity 

of lawless wickedness, — a picture whose 

truthfulness he seals with a challenge, — 

" If it be not so, who then will prove me false, Section xvi. 
And make my words come to nought ? " 9 2 » 9J- 

Eliphaz's third speech, which is a kind of 
Parthian shot, betrays the natural 

Eliphaz's 

irritation due to the consciousness thirdspeeck, 

section xv. 

that he is employing the last weak 
runnings of his argument. He accuses Job 
directly of various sins such as are 

... Lines 8-27. 

natural to his eminent position in 

life, sins which Eliphaz has not discovered as 

a fact, but deduced from Job's condition ; then 

he censures Job's avowal of the evils 

in the world, as indicating a secret tnes2 39 ' 

hankering after wicked ways, — as if in order 

to keep one's self from evil one must deny its 

existence. In these considerations the friends' 

argument reaches its reductio ad ab- 

surdum. Eliphaz then concludes with 

a beautiful exhortation to Job to remove iniquity 



66 THE BOOK OF JOB 

from his tents and reconcile himself to God. 
This exhortation we may regard as the final 
The/riends* appeal of the friends, as they see Job 

final appeal. dri f ted SQ f ar f rQm them> Nor does 

it go unanswered. To the charge of sin Job 
job's re- replies later ; but this exhortation 
spouse. elicits an immediate answer, in which 

he gives utterance once for all to his unchange- 
able attitude before God : — 

" Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! — 
Section xvu Might come even unto His dwelling-place ! 
4^ J 3- I would set in order my cause before Him ; 

And I would fill my mouth with arguments. 

I would know the words He would answer me ; 

And I would mark what He would say unto me. 

Would He plead against me in the greatness of His might ? 

Nay ; but surely He would give heed unto me. 

There it would be an upright man pleading with Him, 

And I should be delivered for ever from my Judge." 

The calm height to which his faith by this 

time has led him is suggestively indi- 

hasadr cated in the way in which he confronts 

vanced. . . . 

again that old problem, once so dis- 
turbing, of God's hidden face and refusal to be 
found. Now it hardly moves him, while he 
can say, — 

_ jt . " For He knoweth the way that is mine ; 

section xvi. 

18, ig. He is trying me ; I shall come forth as gold." 

The lesson of the disciplinary value of God's 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 67 

chastisements is generally regarded as Elibu's 
contribution to the question : does Elihu reach 
a point higher than this ? 

I called Eliphaz's exhortation the friends' 
final appeal. Bildad indeed speaks 

, , . Bildad's 

once more ; but what he says is a third speech, 
virtual confession of defeat. His few 
words are a feeble echo of Eliphaz's favorite 
doctrine of man's innate depravity, the doctrine 
that dies hardest, so to say ; but so manifestly 
aside from the present case that Job ridicules 
them in unmeasured terms: — 

" How hast thou given help to the powerless ! Jofrs an- 
How succored the nerveless arm ! Tion'xviii. 

How hast thou counseled the unwise, *-7- 

And made known truth in abundance ! 
To whom directest thou words ? 
And whose breath goeth forth from thee ? " — 

and then in turn carries on the same strain at 
some length, as if to show how easy Insection 
it is to compose sublime — yet inap- xvuu 8 ~ 2S ' 
plicable — descriptions of God's power. To 
take this view of the passage need not belittle 
the utterances of either Job or Bildad, which 
as matter of fact are true and full of eloquent 
beauty ; it merely reveals by a striking illus- 
tration how entirely the friends have mistaken 
the issue. 

Zophar fails to appear the third time. Is 



68 THE BOOK OF JOB 

he needed ? Have we not reached the friends' 
zophar does natural stopping-place ? 

not speak a . . 

third tim*. So Job is left alone and victorious. 
What now remains ? He has com- 

Jo'b contin- . . 

neshisdis- mitted lire and destiny to the issue of 
righteousness ; he has gazed unflinch- 
ingly into this present evil world, and blinked 
none of its evils ; he has by a creative faith 
made triumphant discoveries in the world above 
and beyond. What has he yet to do ? 
l of a the U p?el Evidently to fit himself, so to speak, 

ent world. . r . 

into the sum of things, to find by 
that same creative faith the road through this 
life, where so often wickedness gets the pay, 
and goodness the affliction. It is to this task, 
this sober survey of a perplexing world, that 
Job now addresses himself. 

He begins with a solemn asseveration of his 
mental and spiritual soundness whereby he is 
able to see things as they are ; and anew 
he commits himself unalterably to righteous- 
ness : — 

" As God liveth, who hath taken away my right, 
Section xix. And the Almighty, who hath embittered my 
*-"• soul,— 

For yet whole is my breath within me, 

And the spirit of God in my nostril, — 

So surely my lips speak not perverseness, 

Nor doth my tongue murmur deceit. 

Far be it from me that I should justify you ; 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 69 

Till my breath is gone will I not let depart my integrity 

from me. 
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go; 
My heart shall not reproach one of my days." 

In such a survey of the world, the first 
thing that calls for solution is the TheProb . 
problem of the wicked, who are so tTJf/Zn- 
secure in this life, and who at the s t % e n Zfx S . ec ' 
end, in a ripened old age, are gath- I2 ~ 45 ' 
ered in like all others. It would be strange, 
after all the assertions and denials, if he 
should leave them without a final word, to 
clear up what has caused him such trembling 
dismay. Nor does he. Here, then, is the 
truth about them. The wicked, after all, have 
not the future ; their life, not being founded 
on the truth of things, cannot count on hope 
or permanence. They are not anchored to 
God ; all is precarious, unsafe, unstable. Be- 
sides, whatever else they gain, the blessing 
paramount, that which alone, whether now or 
hereafter, gives value to life, namely, delight in 
God and sweet dependence on His will, they 
miss entirely ; it is to them a thing non- 
existent. No greater woe than this is con- 
ceivable to Job. And this judgment of his, 
while it raises spiritual estimates to a plane 
immeasurably above that of the friends, also 
throws light on his own standard of living ; 



JO THE BOOK OF JOB 

Job is unwittingly contrasting the wicked with 
himself : — 

" Be mine enemy as the wicked man, 
Section xix. And he that riseth against me as the unright- 
I2 ~ I 9- eous. 

For what is the hope of the godless, when He cutteth off, — 

When God draweth forth his soul ? 

Will God hear his cry, 

When distress cometh upon him ? 

Doth he delight himself in the Almighty ? 

Doth he call upon God at every time ? " 

The picture that Job then draws of the wicked, 
in section which some have tried to give to 
xix. 24-45. Zophar, merely follows this view into 
detail. It is a statement, in vivid poetic form, 
of what we call the logic of events, of the truth 
which we see inlaid in the history of all human 
affairs, that whatever does not make for right- 
eousness does not make for permanence. Its 
drift is not unlike that of Bildad's first speech, 
of which Job has already said, " Of a truth, I 
know it is so." The friends had a nucleus of 
truth ; only they erred by overstatement and 
by purblind application ; Job has found the key 
of things, and he follows it out by the standard 
of the unseen and eternal. 

If, then, the security of the wicked is only 

The true a seeming, what is the reality? If 

h/e, Action their course is folly, what is the true 

wisdom of life, by which we may 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY J I 

walk calmly through the mystery that sur- 
rounds us, and solve it for ourselves, however 
baffling the enigma of the world ? Here comes 
in the twenty-eighth chapter. Is such a topic 
out of place, or must we call it an interpola- 
tion from the author's portfolio ? Se e above, 
Rather, it answers the question that p ' 15 ' 
most naturally arises here, and gives the prac- 
tical lesson in which the Book of Job both 
begins and culminates. The hidden wisdom, 
the way that no creature has found, — 

" God understandeth the way thereto, 
And He knoweth its place. Section xix. 

For He looketh to the ends of the earth ; 92-104. 
Under the whole heaven He seeth. 
When He gave the wind its weight, 
And meted out the waters in a measure, — 
When He gave a law to the rain, 
And a way to the flash of the thunder, 
Then did He see, and declare it ; 
He established it, yea, He searched it out. 

And unto man He said, 
Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, 
And to shun evil is understanding." 

Thus Job, the man perfect and upright, who 
feared God and shunned evil, has 

1 i i r i» • • 1 1 • 1 Summary. 

held fast to the integrity with which 
he began, until he has not only answered Sa- 
tan's question, but solved for every man the 
problem of life. His solution is not new, nor 
does it contradict the wise precepts of the 



J 2 THE BOOK OF JOB 

friends. And yet it is new ; for it comes now 
with a whole world of fact and experience be- 
hind it, reporting that in the most searching 
trial this rule of life has stood the test. To 
fear God and shun evil is wisdom, in spite of 
the affliction that righteousness suffers, in 
spite of the prospered wickedness that is ram- 
pant in the world. And in the deepest sense, 
too, the solution does contradict, if not the 
friends' words, yet the friends' whole false atti- 
tude toward God ; for with Job, to fear God and 
shun evil is not to fear and shun appearances, 
or to trim the sails according to the way in 
which the breeze of God's favor seems for the 
time to set ; it is to be true to the soul's ideal 
of the godlike, in scorn of consequence. 

They say Job was impatient. If patience 
Was y ob means holding one consistent mind 
impatient? through a hard experience, and if pa- 
tience has her perfect work in believing and 
enduring, was he impatient ? 

Having reached this firm landing-place, with 

clear view of the way through this 
sped, sec- world's confusion, and with confident 

outlook toward the vindication be- 
yond death, Job, as is natural, takes a retro- 
spect of his former happy and honored life, 
now so inexplicably plunged into misery. Let 
us bear in mind that he still regards himself as 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY f$ 

standing on the brink of the grave, with no 
hope more in this life. What he bears in his 
hands now he brings to submit to the award 
of that Divine Friend, whom he is to see here- 
after. This fact gives a new significance to 
these three beautiful chapters in which he 
brings his words to a close. In them he gath- 
ers up the threads of his life, one after an- 
other, for God and man to judge, and at the 
end, full of that overmastering desire y ob , s readim 
for God's presence which all along *£%%%' 
has supremely inspired him, he stands end " 
ready for the word that shall vindicate him and 
make him blessed : — 

" Behold my sign ! let the Almighty answer me ! — 
And the charge that mine Adversary hath writ- S &f*%^? x% 

ten! 
Surely I will lift it upon my shoulder ; 
I will bind it unto me like a crown ; 
I will declare to Him the number of my steps, 
I will draw near unto Him like a prince." 

Except half a dozen lines, which not improb- 
ably have become dislocated in transcription, 
these words are the last of Job's stout-hearted 
defense before God and the world. The tes- 
timony is all in ; and now, as the veil of flesh 
is ready to drop away, Job is fully prepared for 
the unseen meeting beyond. 

With Job's words ended, and with the 
friends put to silence, evidently at this point 



74 THE BOOK OF JOB 

the action is ready for its denouement. What 
shall this be ? If the poem is really 

The action . J 

ready for its a finished work of art, as all its f ea- 

aenouement. 

tures thus far have indicated, we nat- 
urally expect the ending to be directly related 
to the main issue, and significant enough to 
bring its deepest elements to solution. We 
see above, h ave seen h° w signally this test fails, 
pa 13, i4- if we regard the main issue as the 
decision of a debate on the question why the 
righteous suffer : the address from the whirl- 
wind, with all its sublimity, does not really 
touch the question ; nor can Elihu be made to 
furnish an answer without a great deal of ac- 
commodation and inference. But I think we 
have become aware also of an issue far deeper 
than this, an issue, not of words and reasoning, 
but of life. The controversy of the friends 
with Job has revealed an antagonism too deep 
and radical to be settled by debate or by any 
verbal decision. The nature of this antagonism 
Satan indicated at the outset, when he charged 
Job with serving God from selfish motives. It 
is the question of serving God for reward, or 
serving God disinterestedly, that is at stake ; 
a question for whose answer we must look be- 
low words and forms, into the deepest currents 
of life. In his own person Job has indeed 
given a thorough refutation to the charge ; 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 75 

but in the battle that he has had to wage with 
his friends, he has dragged to light one See above ^ 
after another their hidden motives, p ' 50 ' 
until he has made it evident that they illustrate 
just what Satan sneered at. The friends are 
not fearing God for nought. Their whole the- 
ory of religion is based on the idea of barter. 
So deeply is this idea ingrained in their life 
that, as we have seen, they have hastened 
without scruple to desert Job and break all the 
ties" of friendship, in order to get on the fa- 
vorable side of God and keep their prospects 
good ; so deeply that they have interpreted the 
mystery of wickedness, not by the fact, but by 
what they think God would like them to say. 
This deep antagonism between the friends and 
Job has manifested its effects in their general 
attitude before God. Job's attitude has been 
emphasized at every step, — supreme longing 
for the restoration of God's presence. " Oh 
that I knew where I might find See section 
Him ! " has been the constant burden xvu 4 ' 
of his cry ; and beginning with his despairing 
wish for a Daysman, his creative faith has kept 
on until he knew that somewhere beyond this 
life he would see God as his friend. The whole 
determination of his life is toward God. The 
attitude of the friends is no less evidently the 
opposite. They are orthodox and dogmatic ; 



J6 THE BOOK OF JOB 

they are zealous for the forms and decorums 
of religion ; but they manifest no hunger for 
direct communion of spirit with God. Their 
God is a tradition, their religion a conven- 
tionalism. They are perfectly content with 
Teufelsdrockh's " absentee God, sitting at the 
outside of the universe and seeing it go/' so 
long as they secure an honorable and prosper- 
ous way through life. Now what kind 
denouement of a denouement shall bring such an 

required. . . 

antagonism as this to solution ? Do 
we not naturally look for some scene wherein 
the two contrasted classes shall stand, as it 
were, naked before God, the thoughts of their 
hearts revealed, not judged in words, but judg- 
ing themselves by their spontaneous, uncalcu- 
lated conduct ? 

If such is the reasonable expectation, what 

could more fully answer to it than the 
theopkany, theophany which actually follows ? It 

sections . _ 

xxvi.and comes as a surprise to all or them, 

xxviii. , ful- 
fills this re. Job and the friends alike. Job is 

guirement. 

looking for a meeting somewhere out 
of human view, where his integrity shall be 
recognized as it is. The friends are looking 
for nothing at all, unless it be some flash of 
divine wrath against him whom they regard 
as so bringing piety to nought. A surprise, ir 
makes of course also that profound and heart- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY J 7 

shaking impression which cannot but result 
when the mortal comes face to face with the 
supernatural. " We may disbelieve," 

, r i i Bucknill, 

says an eminent student of the human The Mad 

: , . r . r , Folk of 

mind, "in any manifestations of the shake- 

. . , , spear e, p. 8. 

supernatural ; but we cannot but be- 
lieve that were their occurrence possible, they 
would profoundly affect the mind. Humboldt 
says, that the effect of the first earthquake 
shock is most bewildering, upsetting one of 
the strongest articles of material faith, namely, 
the fixedness of the earth. Any supernatural 
appearance must have this effect of shaking 
the foundations of the mind in an infinitely 
greater degree." Some illustration of this we 
have already seen indicated in Eliphaz's vision, 
where, when the spirit glided before See section 
his face, he was overwhelmed with lll - 22 ~^ 
fear and trembling, and built the creed and con- 
duct of a lifetime on the communication he 
then received. Of much profounder signifi- 
cance than any vision of spirits, and of corre- 
spondingly greater effect, must be the sublime 
theophany of the whirlwind. It is like setting 
up a divine judgment throne on the earth ; it 
brings the glory of a holiness and truth wherein 
each man may see himself, and wherein the 
thoughts and ideals of each heart must neces- 
sarily be revealed. The way in which men 



78 THE BOOK OF JOB 

meet such a dread ordeal will show, through a 
shrinking abjectness and terror on the one 
side, who at heart is selfish and would be left 
alone ; and on the other side, through a reverent 
awe and joy, who, having the real determination 
of heart toward God, rejoices to be warmed 
and lighted by the sunshine of His presence. 
For such a scene as this Job is fully ready, 
his righteous life disclosed in epitome, 
/or the the- his record on his shoulder. But the 

ophany ; the 

friends not friends? I hey have retreated, one 
by one, before the searching fire of 
the patriarch's words, until they have nothing 
more to say. In order that we may see the 
power of the Divine Presence manifested at 
once on both classes, the friends, or at least 
the spirit and principle that they represent, 
must needs pass likewise in review and sum- 
mary before the reader. If this did not come 
to pass, the action would be lacking in a very 
important and necessary connecting link. 

Here, then, and as I judge with precisely 
this significance, intervene the discourses of 
Elihu. 1 In the character of Elihu the author 

1 If the discourses of Elihu form no part of the original 
poem, but were added, as the critics assert nowadays, by a 
subsequent editor, then all I have to say is, I prefer to study 
the poem in its latest edition. From the point of view here 
taken, the writer who added such a finishing touch as this 
was a master in his art, one who could be fully trusted to 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 79 

presents the friends' side of the question, freed 
from the heats and disturbances of Thedis . 
controversy, and brought to its best £%£*?£. 
expression. Neither in word nor in '££*££ 
general attitude is he at issue with identify him 
them. The only reason why his cause of the 
wrath is kindled against them is be- 
cause their arguments have not been strong 
enough to convict Job ; he represents con- 
fessedly what they would have said, but failed 
to say. He stands on the same presupposi- 
tions ; he reasons concerning the same inac- 
cessible, unapproachable God ; he finds the 
same wicked tendencies in Job ; he points Job 
to the same goal of restoration, discipline, 
renewed prosperity. He is merely directing 
Job in a little more minute terms than they 

compose the whole poem, as indeed I am willing to believe 
he did. In other words, I do not think the critics who would 
expel Elihu have made out their case. From their concep- 
tion of the poem's scope and purpose he is in the way ; they 
cannot help desiring* his absence. Deduct the influence of 
this fact, and the other arguments urged against him, argu- 
ments drawn from his alleged Aramaisms, his peculiarities of 
speech, and the like, are confessedly inconclusive. He is un- 
deniably a little tedious ; he has words and idioms of his own ; 
his character is individualized in a way quite different from 
that of the friends ; but all this, whether so intended or not, 
but serves to adapt him more exquisitely to the part he has 
to play. What the critics would take away on the score of 
its lack of harmony with the rest is more than made up by 
dramatic fitness and skill. 



80 THE BOOK OF JOB 

have used to take proper measures for rein- 
statement in a life of earthly ease and comfort. 
So far as we can see he has no more idea of 
serving God for nought than have the friends. 
Even his exhortation to Job to accept affliction 
for the sake of discipline, true and sound as it 
is, is quite consistent with the idea of getting 
as distinguished from that of giving. 

The conception of the character of Elihu is 
Twofold to be interpreted with a twofold ref- 
S ofmM C s e erence : to the friends, whose cause 
part ' and life he represents ; and to the 

coming theophany, which is to bring, as it were, 
his spiritual testing. 

As the champion of the friends' cause, he 

possesses the advantages that inhere 

the dam- in youth and fresh, enthusiastic en- 

friends" ergy. To him the world of ideas has 

cause. . r . 

just opened, full of intense interest ; 
he is not hide-bound by the timid conservatism 
of age or by the oracles of the past ; he has a 
vigorous, constructive mind, fired by zeal and 
insight. Many of his words are truly noble. 
His discourse is rich in helpful things ; he 
directs Job especially to the secondary revela- 
tions of God's will, — by dream, by vision, by 
the chastisement of suffering, — and seeks thus 
to lead the patriarch to repentance and devout 
submission. All this we may freely concede ; 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 8 I 

for we will remember that the issue of the 
poem is not the issue of goodness with wicked- 
ness. Both sides alike represent righteous- 
ness and devout service of God ; it is only the 
motive of such service, selfish or disinterested, 
that Satan has called into question. And 
what Elihu says, noble though it is, but serves 
to identify him, as to standard and goal, with 
the friends ; it is what consists with a merely 
conventional faith and a traditional God. 

As related to the subsequent theophany, the 
conception of Elihu's character is not EUhuas 
without a certain grim humor, appar- ffi%£ n tji £m 
ent especially in the sharply accentu- ophany - 
ated contrast between his extravagant preten- 
sions at the beginning and his ludicrous abase- 
ment at the end. He opens his discourse 
with a long account of the wonderful sectionxxu. 
thoughts he has and the wonderful 2 ~ 38 ' 
things he is going to do. Then, identifying 
his thoughts with God's thoughts, he sets up 
definitively for Job's Daysman the one whom 
Job had so longed for to stand between him 
and God : — 

" If thou art able, answer me ; 
Set words in array before me, take thy Section 

stand. xxii 47-52. 

Behold I, according to thy word, stand for God ; 
Out of clay am I moulded, also I ; 



82 THE BOOK OF JOB 

Behold, my terror shall not unman thee, 
Nor will my burden on thee be heavy." 

Compare this with Job's words in section vi. 
sectionxxii. 62-69, and it is obvious what he has 
&4,8j. j n m i nc j # Elihu's idea of a Daysman 

is a wise interpreter of life, a \"btt Tfsbft, "a 
messenger, an interpreter/ ' not necessarily su- 
pernatural, but "one of a thousand/' exception- 
ally gifted, and authorized by his gifts to speak, 
— such a one, in short, as he himself feels 
inspired to be. As he proceeds, he feels in- 
creasingly that he is the champion of God, the 
channel of God's word to Job, through which 
the whole controversy is to be settled. 

11 1 will fetch my knowledge from afar, 
Section And to my Maker will I ascribe justice ; 

xxv. 4-7. jr or f a surety my words are no lie ; — 

It is the Perfect in knowledge that is with thee." 

So he continues his discourse, eloquently de- 
fending the Perfect in knowledge ; until across 
section xxv. the desert is seen a storm rising. 
sssqq. With great beauty he begins to des- 

cant on this, and so long as it is an ordinary 
storm he employs it, with no little assumption 
of wisdom, to Job's edification. But as it 
nears, its phenomena become so exceptional 
that his experience can no longer account for 
it: it seems to betoken that God is indeed 
coming, as Job has fervently desired, and as 
the friends have rather savagely wished for 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 83 

him. Whereat Elihu's words become confused ; 
he begins to retract his pretensions, stammers 
an attempt at propitiation, and breaks off 
abruptly, paralyzed by terror : — 

11 Give ear unto this, O Job ; 
Stand, and ponder the marvelous things of Section 

God. xxv - 97-121. 

Knowest thou how God layeth command upon them, 
And maketh shine forth the light of His cloud ? 
Knowest thou the poisings of the thick cloud, 
The wonders of the Perfect in knowledge ? — 
Thou whose garments are hot, 

Because from the south the earth lieth sultry still, — 
Canst thou spread out with Him the skie^, 
Firm, as a molten mirror ? 
. . . O teach us what we may say to Him ! 
We cannot order it — it groweth so dark . . . 
Hath one told Him that I am speaking . . . 
Or hath a man said ... for he shall be swallowed up ! 

And now they no longer see the light, — 
That splendor in the skies, 
For a wind hath passed, and scattered them. 
. . . From the north a golden glory cometh . . . 
Oh, with God is terrible majesty ! 
The Almighty — we have not found Him out ; 
Vast in power, and in judgment, 
And in abundance of righteousness ; — 
He will not afflict; 
Therefore do men fear Him ; 
He regardeth not any wise in their own conceit." 

Thus the self-appointed Daysman shrinks away 
before the test, and we hear no more from 
him. A humiliating retreat for one who set 



84 THE BOOK OF JOB 

out so valiantly and self-confidently to defend 
God. 1 

The opening words from the whirlwind dis- 
The Lord's miss Elihu abruptly, — 

address 

from the « who is this, darkening counsel 

ivkircwind) ° 

sections With words, — but without knowledge ? " 

xxvi. and 

tEfSxJt* Then the Lord addresses Job : — 
2-5. 

u Gird up thy loins now, like a strong man, 
And I will ask thee ; and inform me thou.'* 

The dread Presence is here ; and Job stands at 
last before Him who seemed so far off, yet to 
whom in all darkness Job's spirit turned, as 
the needle to the pole. What now shall the 
divine revelation be ? 

Not what Job expected ; not perhaps what 

1 At the end of Browning's Caliban upon Setebos, which is 
his portrayal of a brutish being's speculations on God, there 
is a striking though grotesque parallel to this closing scene of 
Elihu: — 

" What, what ? A curtain o'er the world at once ! 
Crickets stop hissing ; not a bird — or, yes, 
There scuds His raven that has told Him all ! 
It was fool's play, this prattling ! Ha ! The wind 
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, 
And fast invading fires begin ! White blaze — 
A tree's head snaps — and there, there, there, there, there, 
His thunder follows ! Fool to gibe at Him ! 
Lo ! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos ! 
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, 
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month 
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape ! " 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 85 

our curiosity seeks. We look for the veil to 
uproll and disclose mysteries beyond 

. Character 

human research ; Job expects a hear- of the divine 

revelation. 

ing and a justification. And what is 
it ? Just the unending miracle that passes be- 
fore our eyes every day. In the heavens above, 
in the earth beneath, in the great events of 
creation and phenomena of nature, in the myr- 
iad life that fills land and air and ocean, we are 
made to see that there is Wisdom and Power 
sufficient for everything, to make every crea- 
ture fulfill its part in one infinite purpose and 
will. No esoteric disclosure for some excep- 
tionally favored disciple, but what every one 
may lift up his eyes and see. No apologies 
for mysterious dealings, nor little systems of 
men corrected, but the perpetual self -justifying 
course of a harmonious universe. Is it not 
sublimer so ? Would we desire the God of the 
ages to measure reasoning with mortals, and 
argue out a case ? Nay, it was more than 
genius, it was inspiration, that kept the author 
from such a fatuity. 

Job hears, and makes his own application. 
He had stood ready, like a prince, How j ob 
bearing the record of his righteous TorVs^ 
life on his shoulder. But what words ' 
seemed his worth, when he had only his 
friends to compare with, seems in the infinite 



86 THE BOOK OF JOB 

light very small. When the Lord pauses for 
his answer, he has no word to say. No claim 
more of merit and a triumphant cause ; no 
clamor for explanation ; all has melted away 
in reverence and humility, being absorbed in 
the one blessed consciousness that God is no 
more a hearsay but a seen reality. 

" I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, 
Section But now mine eye seeth Thee ; 

xxix. Q-12. Wherefore I loathe me and repent 
In dust and ashes." 

Thus Job meets the test with that worship 
which is at once rapture and pain ; takes his 
place, so to say, with submission and self-ab- 
negation, in the sum of God's creatures, con- 
tent to fulfill his part with the rest. 1 This is 
his vindication : to go on, with enlightened 
eyes and chastened spirit. It is altogether in 
keeping that in this vision, so profound in its 
influence, self is lost, and reverent, trustful, 
penitent love abides. 

1 In the long train of creative works by which the Lord 
teaches Job of Himself and His ways, we are reminded of 
Milton's reflections in the Sonnet on his Blindness : — 

" His state 
Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest." 
Nor is the lesson that Milton draws for his own conduct 
dissimilar to the submissive attitude here taken by Job : — 

u Who best 
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best." 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 87 

What, now, has become of that problem 
which most interpreters have taken 

r How the 

as the central theme of the Book or job-probiem, 

as generally 

Job, — " the mystery of God's provi- propounded 

* ' J J is answered. 

dential government of men ? " In de- see^ above, 
nying to it the supreme significance, 
it would be temerity, not to say blindness, so 
to insult the critical mind of the ages as to 
banish it altogether. Nor does Job himself 
ignore it. Has he not asked virtually the 
same question ? — 

" Why are not judgment times determined by the Al- 
mighty ? Section xvi. 

And they that know Him — why see they not 34*35- 
His days ? " 

And all this time, though he knew it not, he 
has been living the answer. The grand con- 
clusion, the sum total, is expressed not in 
words but in life : " Now mine eye seeth 
Thee." Need one whose eyes are opened by 
such a hard schooling ask why it was given ? 
The answer is self-evident. Less than such 
stern discipline would not have produced such 
beauty and strength of human character. Less 
than such severe chastening would not have 
quickened Job's vision to see how subtly self- 
ish motives may work to impair the friend- 
ships and the wisdom of earth, and how suffi- 
cing is the refuge provided in the eternal Love 



88 THE BOOK OF JOB 

beyond this life. And the answer thus em- 
bodied in the patriarch's experience is a world- 
answer, pointing to that mystery of travail and 
suffering which everywhere underlies the deep- 
est insight, the highest achievements. Shall 
we ask why God invades our ease and scourges 
us onward and upward to the table-lands of 
vision ? The new horizon and the purer air 
and the stronger muscles are the sufficient rea- 
son. " The spirit of man is an instrument 
which cannot give out its deepest, finest tones, 
except under the immediate hand of the Di- 
vine Harmonist." 

Then comes the Epilogue. Job is com- 
mended ; prays for his friends, who 
iopte t sec- are forgiven at his intercession ; is 
restored to health and double pros- 
perity. The friends were righteous for the 
sake of worldly good ; Job was righteous for 
the sake of God. At the end of his long quest 
he found God and worldly good too ; the greater 
brought with it the less. Some think his res- 
toration is an artistic blemish ; that it would 
have been a nobler ending if he had been left 
suffering. It would be a blemish if this paltry 
reward were the end which Job sought, and 
for which the poem existed. But the quest 
has already reached its supreme end in the 
vision and restored favor of God ; this is merely 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 89 

its incidental addition. And at least the old 
poet has put God and prosperity in the right 
relative places, in remarkable anticipation of 
the precept, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and His righteousness : and all these things 
shall be added unto you." 

IV. 

One more inquiry remains, the inquiry as to 
its origin. What must have been the IV Co , isid . 
age, and what the nation, out of which ^^ r £ 
such a book could grow ? What gen- origm ' 
eral vogue of thinking could have environed 
such colossal thought ? Genius may indeed be 
a mighty tree, growing from an unseen germ 
to be the one commanding object of the plain; 
but it is rooted in the same soil that nourishes 
the shrubs at its feet. A great work 

r 1 • i 1 r i i • A P oem ^ s 

of literature both feeds its age and is relation to 

c 1 t Ti iii .its age. 

fed by it. What the book returns, in 
transmuted and vitalized form, to its gener- 
ation is what it has already gathered out of 
the hopes and needs and problems that sur- 
round it. Not that the highest literature 
is merely the echo of the people's surging 
thought, and no more ; we cannot say this of 
Tennyson and Browning and Whittier and 
Emerson to-day : it is rather the utterance of 
those who, making the universal cause their 



90 THE BOOK OF JOB 

own, stand nearest the light, and bring the 
people's inarticulate longings to expression. 
The poets of an age, when they let their open 
and genuine hearts speak, are its truest seers. 
In them we hear, not one man alone, but the 
vast body of the time, pervaded by a spirit of 
hope or doubt or inquiry ; a spirit voiceless, 
until the yEolian strings of the poet's heart feel 
and answer to its breathings ; a spirit unguided, 
until the seer's own disciplined and originative 
personality conducts it to its dimly sought rest. 
This is the truth to-day, and has been ever 
since we could first trace the connection of 
literature with history ; may we not say that 
something like it was equally a truth twenty- 
six centuries ago ? And when this Book of 
Job comes home to the general spir- 

Such relation . . , - .. • r • , i -i i 

to be sought ltual need as treshly as it it had been 
written to meet the maladies of this 
nineteenth Christian century, may we not say 
that its involution is equal to its evolution, and 
that there was a great heart of the people in 
that old time, out of which the book grew and 
to which it thrilled responsive, as it does to 
ours ? 

Yet when by external tests we endeavor to 
Difficulty of fix its age, we find the book very baf- 

determining 

its age. fling, Generations of scholars have 
ransacked the ten centuries from Moses to 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 9 1 

the Babylonian Exile to find a place where it 
would fit in. It seems to move in a region 
unconnected with any period of history or cus- 
tom that we are acquainted with. It was be- 
cause the book has no traceable contact with 
Mosaic legislation and ritual that it was con- 
jectured by old interpreters to be the work of 
Moses' middle age, when he was a shepherd in 
Midian. It is because the book speaks in the 
Wisdom dialect, as did Solomon and his com- 
peers, that some students trace in it a shadowy 
contact with Solomon's age. It is because for 
the lesson of the book, intensely individual 
though it seems, a national occasion and sig- 
nificance must at all hazards be postulated, 
that its composition is by many assigned to a 
time near or within the Exile period. But 
none of these indications can be regarded as 
conclusive. Nor is it easier to account for 
what the book contains than for what it omits. 
It evinces knowledge, not slight nor casual, of 
Arabian deserts, Judaean mountain ravines, 
mines of the Sinai peninsula, beasts and plants 
of the Nile region ; it contemplates modes of 
life both pastoral and urban ; it purports to 
represent a distant patriarchal time, where to 
yet breathes the air of a later civiliza- JS^** 
tion. For the historic setting of such setting ' 
a product as this we must look, I think, be- 



92 THE BOOK OF JOB 

neath the vicissitudes of wars and dynasties, 
beneath the surface of political movements, 
legislation, ecclesiastical affairs, to that stratum 
of national life where there is least to record, 
yet where most truly history is made, that sub- 
soil of thought and custom where the great 
body of the people live and work and think. 
In such tranquil surroundings, if we can pene- 
trate thither, we shall find the influences that 
lie at the roots of the Book of Job. 

But are there obtainable data enough, after 
all these centuries, to help us conjecture, by the 
creative imagination, something of that far- 
away " spirit of the age " to which the Book of 
Job supposably answers ? Let us gather up 
what there is, and see. 

One fact we may take with confidence as the 
yob a work starting-point of our inquiry, — the 
fretw'is- fact that the Book of Job belongs dis- 
dom ' tinctively to the so - called Wisdom 

literature of the Hebrews ; being indeed, of all 
the products of that literature, the grandest in 
the reach and ripeness of its thought, and the 
completest in its literary form. 

What the Hebrews called Wisdom corre- 
sponds to what other nations call phi- 
wisdomor losophy. The books classified under 

philosophy. . c 

that name contain the thoughts of 
earnest and observant minds on life, on con- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 93 

duct, on worldly prudence, on divine things, 
on the mystery that encompasses the world. 
And they introduce us to a class of men, of 
whom otherwise little is known, the "wise 
men," who in an unofficial way, and with ob- 
jects less purely religious, taught and had in- 
fluence along with priests and prophets . in 
shaping the spiritual life of the Hebrew peo- 
ple. " The law shall not perish from j eremiahi 
the priest," said the men who re- xviiL I& - 
jected Jeremiah's prediction of evil, " nor coun- 
sel from the wise, nor the word from the 
prophet." Each of these three classes had its 
work to do in the Hebrew T state, and each has 
left its record in the Hebrew literature. The 
Law and the Prophets, mighty as are their in- 
fluence and doctrine, leave an important part 
unsupplied ; they are supplemented, as they 
need to be, by the utterances of Wisdom. 

And a fitting supplement these are ; for just 
as through law and prophecy comes 

. r . , . . . . The human 

to us the voice of the divine, through character of 
the Wisdom literature we hear the 
voice of the human. It is man thinking for 
himself, interpreting what he sees about him 
and above him by the free exercise of reason, 
spiritual insight, faith. The note of law is au- 
thority ; the note of prophecy is, "Thus saith 
the Lord." In both of these that which is 



94 THE BOOK OF JOB 

above takes the initiative, it lays behest on 
man without cooperation of his, adapting itself 
to human limitations, but not reflecting them. 
In Wisdom the initiative is taken by man ; its 
note is inquiry and discovery. It is the result 
of man's efforts, crude and short-sighted, it may 
be, but his own, to think God's thoughts after 
Him, and shape the world anew by the ideal of 
man's constructive heart Whatever it gen- 
eralizes from the world of experience is the 
fruit of its honest and open-eyed observation. 
Whatever conclusions it reaches regarding 
man's duty and destiny rest on visible and veri- 
fiable facts. And whenever it pushes its in- 
quiries out into the mystery beyond this world, 
it keeps within the bounds of a rational faith 
and insight, as it interprets the things it be- 
holds, or boldly pronounces on that which 
ought to be. This it is which gives such uni- 
versal human interest to the literature of Wis- 
dom. It is a literature that embodies, not the 
oracles of priests and prophets, who, having 
the nearer vision, speak as exempt from doubt 
and mistake, but the halting yet progressive 
thoughts of men like ourselves, who, sur- 
rounded by a world of perplexing experience, 
must interrogate for its meaning the native in- 
sight with which every man is endowed. When 
such men give counsel, the universal feeling 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 95 

of comradeship provides ears to hear. And 
whatever revelation of the unseen is achieved 
by their yearning faith is revelation indeed. 

Essentially a people's literature, then, is this 
Hebrew Wisdom ; this, too, in the 

Wisdom, a 

more natural and ordinary sense. Not peopled ut- 
an official utterance, it rises out 01 
the people's every-day work and practical af- 
fairs, giving voice to the thoughts with which 
their lives are most conversant. To kings and 
laborers alike it gives direction and guidance : 
gathering wisdom for men when they go to the 
temple for prayer, and when they go to the 
city-gate for counsel ; walking with them in the 
field where they toil, and in the market-place 
where they bargain. Its note is eminently in- 
dividual ; * herein lies one of its distinctive 
characteristics. Law and ritual are prescribed 
for the congregation ; prophecy addresses it- 
self to the nation at large, reading the nation's 
history in the divine light. The counsel of the 

1 Wellhausen, in his article on " Israel " in the Encyclope- 
dia Britannica, makes this strong individualism of the Book of 
Job an argument for its post-exilic origin, because he regards 
the pre-exilic literature as suffused only with the national con- 
sciousness. But I think he does not take sufficient account 
of the fundamental difference between the Wisdom literature 
on the one hand and the Law and the Prophets on the other. 
Wisdom was always individual even from its beginning, as 
truly so before the Exile as after ; and the argument for the 
age of the Book of Job must be made up on other grounds. 



96 THE BOOK OF JOB 

wise concerns man as man ; and in no other 
department of the literature are we brought so 
near the great heart of the nation, so near to 
men's common and secular pursuits, as in this, 
where untitled and unmitred men take upon 
themselves to speak out freely and in the nat- 
ural style what is in them. For this very rea- 
son, also, no other literature is so hard to con- 
nect, in our reading of it, with national events. 
To find its era and origin we must find how it 
answers to the general pervasive spirit of an 
age. 

The beginnings of the Wisdom culture we 

trace to the age of Solomon, a period 

of thecal- when, as never before and perhaps as 

ture of Wis- , 

dominSoio- never after, the Hebrew nation broke 

man's time. ■ 

through the shell of its narrow exclu- 
siveness and became awake to broader and 
more cosmopolitan interests. Solomon him- 
self, with his keen devotion to knowledge, his 
judicial mind, and his " largeness of heart," 
was the impulse-giving centre. Through his 
enterprises in commerce, in art, in internal im- 
provement, in foreign intercourse, a new and 
larger spirit pervaded the air and began spon- 
taneously to blossom into literary expression. 
Inquiring what such a rich and varied world 
meant, and what were the laws of its successes 
and failures, men began to formulate their 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 97 

observations into generalized maxims, such as 
we see in the Book of Proverbs. This book, 
which contains the earliest Wisdom utterances 
that have come down to us, is the natural lit- 
erary evolution from those "dark questions'' 
which Solomon put to the Queen of Sheba, or 
exchanged with Hiram, King of Tyre ; and in 
the aphoristic mashal style therein exemplified 
is set the type for all the succeeding Wisdom 
literature. How much of the thought of that 
nascent time remains to us in written product 
it is impossible to say ; but its spiritual attitude 
and tendency was of a type so distinctive, and 
so expressive of the character of the age and its 
king, that down to the days of its latest devel- 
opment, only a century before Christ, the works 
of the Wisdom literature still legitimated them- 
selves by the name of the wise son of David. 
The Book of Proverbs, the Book of Job, the 
Book of Ecclesiastes, and the two apocryphal 
books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, 
which make up the extant body of the Hebrew 
Wisdom, possess, with all their differences in 
style and doctrine, a unity of character answer- 
ing to the free spirit of judgment and inquiry 
impressed upon that literature at its birth. 

But a beginning is only a beginning ; we 
cannot expect a literature, however vigorous 
the impulse of its inception, to leap into exist- 



98 THE BOOK OF JOB 

ence full grown. The proverbs and riddles and 

dark questions with which Solomon 

a develop- and his court amused themselves, 

ment must 

be allowed though they embody many an earnest 
interrogation of life and the world, 

are still ages away from that ripened and sea- 
soned product apparent in the Book 

Marks 0/ . " 

later culture of Job. Before we reach that su- 

injob. J 

preme achievement we must allow 
time enough for the Poor Richard maxims 
about diligence and prudence and industry and 
temperance which form the staple of the early 
mashal to have passed from truths into truisms ; 
time enough for the Wisdom utterance to have 
developed from detached observations into a 
body of philosophy, and then to have hardened 
into an orthodoxy, with its intolerance of new 
things, and its disposition to make life or per- 
dition depend on what a man thinks ; time 
enough for the culture of Wisdom to have long 
departed from courts and palaces, and to have 
become the occupation of a recognized guild, 
with its blue blood, its sacred traditions, its 
learned nomenclature ; time enough for the phi- 
losophy to have become so international that 
it is taken as no strange thing for an author to 
represent Edomites and Hauranites and Ara- 
maeans as speaking in a common religious dia- 
lect which in no way interferes with the dis- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 99 

tinctive cult of any nation. When we bear in 
mind how tenaciously theological views once 
established hold their ground, contesting to 
the death every inch of advance, we shall be 
slow to reckon the period as brief which covers 
the progress of ideas from Solomon to Job. 
For not only does the book bear all the marks 
of development just described, it sig- H(rw j ob 
nalizes also a new period of doubt ZwTerfof 
succeeding to the first age of discov- °S doubt ' 
ery and generalization. In its pages the Wis- 
dom hitherto accepted is becoming old and 
stale. Its sages are repeating th^ir lessons by 
rote : lessons faultless in rhetoric, but no 
longer thrilling hearts to vital response, and 
too inflexible to adapt themselves to new ex- 
periences. The Book of Job exists largely in 
order to call into question that very founda- 
tion truth, which is to Wisdom what Newton's 
law is to astronomy, that both righteous and 
wicked receive in this life the fruit of their 
deeds, prosperity or destruction. A new in- 
duction of life must be made, for in that 
principle there are two fatally weak 

A ., _ Weak points 

points. A weak point first in its as- inthe earlier 

r r c . Wisdom. 

sumption of fact ; for so far as this see above,?. 

33, also p. iq. 

life reveals there is no difference be- 
tween the fate of the righteous and the fate 
of the wicked. Open your eyes and see every- 



IOO THE BOOK OF JOB 

where the wicked dying in a prosperous and 
honored old age ; and is not Job himself, the 
man perfect and upright, suffering a misery 
which if this standard is true is injustice ? A 
second weak point it betrays in its fruit of 
character. For under such a law of life men, 
reckoning surely on prosperity as the reward 
of their righteousness, will put up their right- 
eousness in the market to be sold for a price ; 
so that the mocking spirit roaming to and fro 
in the earth may with only too much reason 
ask, " Doth that well-rewarded man serve God 
for nought ? " Satan may be narrow and self- 
ish, but he has sharp eyes. He sees, what 
also we see, that when we make God over from 
a personal Sovereign to a law of nature, forth- 
with from servants we become masters, and 
begin to mould that law to our own selfish pur- 
poses. That was no small discovery to make, 
in those early days ; requiring, not only acumen 
on the part of the individual, but a reenforcing 
readiness and sympathy in the spirit of his 
age ; and the fact that the author of the Book 
of Job has made it indicates that the medita- 
tive years had passed through a long maturing 
process, until some of their best-established 
ideas, over ripe, were ready to fall. 

But to give definite date to such a develop- 
ment as this, to locate it at its precise point in 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY IOI 

the ages, is extremely hard, not to say wholly 
uncertain. The tides of the spirit, Dij ^ cu i ty 
which we are endeavoring to trace, */££%*** 
are not easily estimated by years. Zud^Z^ 
Besides, all this belongs to the class pro uct ' 
of events of which little note is taken in the 
more pretentious records that we call histori- 
cal. We see its fruits in literature, and to 
some extent in the coloring of political prog- 
ress ; but to find its habitat we must, as I have 
intimated, turn aside from courts and capitals, 
with their alternations of good and wicked ad- 
ministrations and their fitful vogues of piety 
and idolatry, to those quieter regions where 
men think more and live a less changeful life. 
We have not reached the real heart of Israel, 
that Isaiah's " remnant ? which was the idola- 
trous nation's sole redemption, when we have 
merely traced what was going on at Samaria 
and Jerusalem. While in these capitals of 
Israel and Judah long lines of kings were cre- 
ating some surface agitation by playing their 
-little games of war and diplomacy ; while 
priests were working out their elaborate rit- 
uals for the public religious service ; while 
prophets were strenuously seeking to guide 
political affairs according to principles of faith 
and righteousness ; in those smaller towns and 
country places which could on occasion fur- 



102 THE BOOK OF JOB 

nish a herdsman of Tekoa to prophesy or a 
Barzillai the Gileadite to serve with his sub- 
stance the cause of a fugitive king, there was 
all the time, we must believe, a deep undercur- 
rent of constructive, progressive thought, flow- 
ing and broadening from its remote source in 
the ages, channeling its way through the real- 
ity that alone can vitalize any forms ; on which 
current many earnest minds, unheeding the 
world's fluctuations, were borne steadily for- 
ward toward their spiritual rest. Among these 
minds, and with such tranquil surroundings, 
dwelt the wise men who wrought at the prob- 
lems of life. 

On what kind of a world, then, looked out 
the wise man who wrote for us the 

Background _ r t i •> t r 

of the Book Book or Job? In the first place, as 

of Job; the J 

social state the whole atmosphere of the book 

recognized. 

makes evident, it was a world of 
tranquil, settled conditions of life ; these seem 
section xx. to ^ ^ e whole background of the 
7 " J0, writer's consciousness. When Job 

looks back upon his life of helpful activity 
among his neighbors and dependents and of 
wise counsel in the city-gates, and when Eli- 
phaz says, — 

Section ix. " that which I have seen will I declare ; 

33-37- Which wise men tell, and have not hidden, — 

Things heard from their fathers, 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 103 

Unto whom alone the land was given, 

And no stranger hath passed among them," — 

we seem to hear, not the voice of these charac- 
ters alone, but the voice of an author whose 
dwelling-place has for ages been remote from 
invasions and national upheavals. Such places 
there must have been, many of them, in the 
land of Judaea, where one dynasty occupied the 
throne continuously from David to the Baby- 
lonian Captivity, and where the whole history is 
notably lacking in the interest due to stormy 
and revolutionary annals. In such regions 
Peace under her olive could without interrup- 
tions maintain her traditions and dwell among 
high thoughts. 1 But, secondly, the very region 
and era which would furnish such congenial 
field for the culture of Wisdom would also be 
pervaded by an atmosphere in which such Wis- 
dom, if unvitalized by doubts and new discov- 
eries, must inevitably grow old and crumble. 
For that same settled permanence gave abun- 
dant opportunity for the rich to extend their 

1 Nothing is clearer to my mind than that the Book of Job 
contemplates a period not of adversity, but, if anything, of too 
uniform and uninterrupted prosperity. Those who, assum- 
ing that it is a " national dramatic poem," project it into a 
time of hardship when, like the Captivity for instance, the 
lesson is needed that a righteous and favored nation may nev- 
ertheless be afflicted, seem to me to be doing violence to the 
whole presupposition on which Job, as a wise reformer of his 
age, is establishing a broader and deeper truth. 



104 THE BOOK OF JOB 

possessions and grow more selfish and heartless, 
while the hungry poor were obliged 

Compare 

section xvi. to tread the rich man s wine-press or 

3t>~59- 

roam the wastes for bread. Society 
would crystallize into classes, with their tyran- 
nies of the powerful over the weak, and of the 
aristocratic over the humble. To oppress the 
needy, or, what comes to the same, to let them 
stand shivering and hungry at the rich man's 
door would become, even with the nominally 
righteous, more and more a matter of course ; 

while with the unscrupulous and 

section xvi. wicked the harshness of the unfeel- 
60-73. 

ing creditor and the secret sins of the 

luxurious idle would find their natural nesting- 
place. All this, which but follows the universal 
tendencies of human nature, reads almost like 
a transcript from the book we are studying. 
Consider what kind of social state that must 
section xv. h ave been wherein Eliphaz could so 
8 ~ 27 ' naturally predicate just these sins of 

Job merely because the latter was rich ; where- 
sections ix. m professed sages who had their les- 

Xl.yXllt. S()n on ]y ky j^g ^ ^ Q ^[^ ^Q ^J 

iniquity that existed apart from its doom of 

misery, while at the same time the 

pure soul of Job, touched with the 

feeling of human wretchedness, was quivering 

with dismay to see landmarks removed, cloth- 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 105 

ing stripped from the needy debtor, famished 
and thirsty toilers in the very fields section xvi. 
and wine-vats of the wealthy, and yet j^Ue^ee 
apparently no flash of divine judgment "**'' 
against such enormities. The age on which 
our author looked was not especially idolatrous 
or apostate, nor were the forms and decorums 
of religion lacking ; it was an age whose easy 
prosperity, too long unwatched and undis- 
turbed, was becoming heartless, callous to so- 
cial ills, heedlessly worldly. 

And for such a social state what spiritual 
guidance and admonition existed ? state o/ 
The wise men sat in the city - gates i£^£ l 7n 
and went in and out among the peo- J° bstime - 
pie ; what did they teach ? As far as we can 
judge, merely a wisdom that followed the age 
instead of leading it, that cherished dead tradi- 
tion instead of striking out new truths for new 
and living needs. The venerable Pro- 
verbs of Solomon constituted its basis ; verbs of s u 

onion. 

and these, with their thrifty laws of 
success, might easily have become popular as a 
rich man's book, making it so natural, as they 
do, for men to draw the comfortable conclusion 
that because righteousness is the means of 
prospering in the earth therefore prosperity 
is the evidence of righteousness. But in addi- 
tion to these there must have been accumu- 



106 THE BOOK OF JOB 

lated a considerable body of Wisdom, several 
The greater specimens of which have been pre- 
ttfuZf served in the book before us. Bildad 
front injob. and Eliphaz quote explicitly from it, 

zr^jsTix.' to prove the transitoriness and the 
3 ~ 71 ' present misery of the wicked ; Job 

fl% 4 T quotes a passage of similar import, in 
Section via. order to ref ute it ; and it is not un- 
likely that Job's description of God's 
ways in history and Bildad's descrip- 

Sections . . . it i 

xvu. % xviu. tion oi His mysterious dealings above, 
to which latter may be added Job's 
continuation in the same strain, are transcripts 
from a philosophy familiar to all the sages of 
the time. To the same spirit, though proba- 
bly now first published, may be reckoned the 
sections in. oracle of Eliphaz's vision, and per- 
3 S-fo 4 . XIX ' haps Job's praise of Wisdom. Elihu, 
sections ric ^ * n words but obeying uncon- 
xxu.-xxv. sc iou.sly the dominant traditions, tries 
to bring Wisdom up to date in order to fit 
Job's case ; he, and indeed all the friends, may 
be regarded as finger-posts of the spiritual 
teaching of Job's time. And what do we dis- 
cern in it, beyond the lines already laid down 
in the Solomonic Wisdom ? The masJial is 
more finished and rhetorical ; from a detached 
apothegm of two lines it has become a con- 
tinuous and highly wrought picture ; but it is 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 107 

still ringing changes on the same old theme 
of righteousness and reward, wickedness and 
woe ; and in reconciling the obvious discrep- 
ancies of the world it has advanced only far 
enough to invent a doctrine of innate corrup- 
tion, which makes every man wicked enough 
to deserve whatever punishment he gets. It 
is a wisdom that occupies the social heights, 
looking down upon miseries with which it 
does not sympathize ; and it has so lost vi- 
tality that it leaves the world heed- Thewise 
less and undisturbed. Corresponding jjJ2^j£. 
with this is the spiritual state of its itual state ' 
teachers. Their God has become a hearsay, 
their teaching a conventionalism. Zealous to 
justify God in all His ways, no calamity could 
be greater to them than to meet God face to 
face. Thus along with their age they have be- 
come unspiritual and worldly ; and deep be- 
neath their philosophy there lurks the dry-rot 
of a selfishness which eats away their sensibil- 
ity to the highest and truest things. 

Such a state of things as this brings its in- 
evitable reaction. Sooner or later Sa- 

, _ Hotv this 

tans question of motive must come state of 

things meets 

to the front. Sooner or later also &* reaction. 
such a spirit, permeating the remote corners 
of society, must begin to leaven the nation's 
affairs, and to attract the attention of the 



IOS THE BOOK OF JOB 

prophets. The first of these, the question of 
motive, has been raised and nobly answered by 
in the Book the author of the Book of Job ; who, 
of job. j n a j} fas splendor of the later mashal, 
has conceived and written what is at once a 
masterly arraignment of Wisdom's weak points 
and a creative solution of the world's problem, 
so woven together in portraying the character 
of a historic hero as to make a world-epic, a 
in the sublime monument of universal liter- 

prophets. ature< Butj m eanwhile, has all this 

social background of our poem been otherwise 
lost to history ? Let us see. During the 
prosperous days that culminated in the reign 
of Hezekiah, in the kingdom of Judah, a coun- 
try prophet, Micah, looking upon the same 
secluded scenes that we have imagined for our 
Mkah u. author, spoke such burning words as 
Iy 2 ' these : " Woe to them that devise 

iniquity, and work evil upon their beds ! when 
the morning is light, they practice it, because 
it is in the power of their hand. And they 
covet fields, and seize them ; and houses, and 
take them away : and they oppress a man and 
his house, even a man and his heritage. ,, 
Such sin as this was apparently the crying 
evil of that time ; for we hear also 

Isaiah v. 8. ^ _ . . , . . 

Micah s greater contemporary, Isaiah, 
from his point of observation at the capital, 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 109 

saying, "Woe unto them that join house to 
house, that lay field to field, till there be no 
room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the 
midst of the land ! " Exactly this unchecked 
covetousness of the landed proprietors, with 
its attendant cruelty to the poor, we Section xvL 
have seen before : it is the first great 3b ~ 59 ' 
evil specified by Job, in his detailed survey of 
his surroundings ; nor can the friends ignore 
it, blind as they are to many things, Sectio ^ ix , 
when they see men dwelling in deso- 34; xllu 37 ' 
lated cities, and seizing on houses that they 
would not build. The general religious condi- 
tion, too, recognized by these prophets, is not 
at variance with what we have already traced 
as connected with our poem. It is not idolatry 
and apostasy that they denounce, so See Micaky 
much as that formalism which freely v / s Jiai ; u n- 
dedicates worldly goods and neglects I7; v ' 7 ' 
moral obligations, which is scrupulous to ob- 
serve new-moons and sabbaths, but is all foul- 
ness and extortion within. " Seek 
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge 
the fatherless, plead for the widow/' is Isa- 
iah's summary of man's duty ; and Micah's 
conclusion of the matter might be taken as the 
motto of the Book of Job : u He hath 

t •, , s~\ 1 i Micah vi. 8. 

showed thee, O man, what is good ; 

and what doth the Lord require of thee, but 



I IO THE BOOK .OF JOB 

to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with thy God ? " Nor can we fail to 
be struck by the remarkable parallelism be- 
tween the blind subserviency to a traditional 
Wisdom on the part of Job's friends and the 
isaiah xxix. kind of teaching that Isaiah observed 
13,14. j n ^ a g e . « Forasmuch as this 

people draw nigh unto me, and with their 
mouth and with their lips do honor me, but 
have removed their heart far from me, and 
their fear of me is a commandment of men 
which hath been learned by rote i 1 therefore, 
behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work 
among this people, even a marvelous work and 
a wonder : and the wisdom of their wise men 
shall perish, and the understanding of their 
prudent men shall be hid." Is not this the 
very portrait of the men whose well-conned wis- 
dom was so riddled by the honest doubts of Job ? 
It seems to me, therefore, that we have 
The Book of f° un d an eminently probable date for 
t?obdfiy ng our P oem - What so natural as that, 
"Time o/ e Hez- J ust about at the time when the men 
ekiah. Q £ j-jezekiah, perhaps in response to 

a kind of popular vogue, were giving enlarged 
see Pro- currency to the old Solomonic lore, 
verbs, xxv. 1. some un known country poet, speak- 
ing not for a rich and thrifty class but for man 

1 So the margin of the Revised Version. 



THE INTRO D UCTOR Y STUD Y III 

as man, should have shown wherein that lore 
was lacking, and by sifting it with doubt 
should have fitted his times with a greater 
truth ? Such, I am not reluctant to think, was 
the origin of the Book of Job. And in so con- 
cluding, we see in many significant points how 
the age and its needed lesson are met together. 
With this conjecture agrees very well the 
one seemingly clear recognition of contempo- 
rary history which the Book of Job j v S aiiu. 
contains. In the speech wherein Job temporary 
concedes to his friends what he holds hlstory ' 
in common with them concerning God's ways, 
he says : — 

" With Him are wisdom and might ; 
To Him belong counsel and understanding. S ^ n viiL 

Behold, He teareth down, and it shall not be 

builded; 
He shutteth up a man, and there shall be no opening. 
Behold, He restraineth the waters, and they dry up ; 
He letteth them forth, and they lay waste the earth. 
With Him are strength and truth ; 
The erring one and he that causeth to err are His. 
Who leadeth counselors away captive ; 
And judges He maketh fools. 
The bond of kings He looseth. 
And bindeth a cord upon their loins. 
Who leadeth priests away captive ; 
And the long established He overthroweth. 
Who removeth the speech of trusted ones ; 
And the discernment of the aged He taketh away. 
Who poureth contempt on princes ; 



112 THE BOOK OF JOB 

And the girdle of the strong He looseth. 

Who revealeth deep things out of darkness, 

And bringeth forth to light the shadow of death. 

Who maketh nations great, — and destroyeth them; 

Who spreadeth nations out, — and leadeth them away. 

Who dishearteneth the leaders of the people of the land, 

And maketh them wander in a waste, where there is no path. 

They grope in darkness without light ; 

And He maketh them wander like a drunken man." 

Here there is such insistence on the idea of 
captivity — counselors, priests, and whole na- 
tions being pictured as led away, kings as de- 
throned and bound with cords, princes as 
treated with contempt, strong leaders as trudg- 
ing in despair over the pathless desert — that 
we most reasonably conclude some world-fill- 
ing event, or series of events, observed in the 
author's lifetime, 1 and still recent enough to 
point a solemn moral, had made a deep impres- 
sion on his mind. He talks about such his- 
tory, whatever it was, much as we would talk 
about the well-remembered events of the Civil 
War ; only, according to the devout Hebrew 
custom, he interprets the work of human agents 
Historical as the permitted and appointed judg- 
C teI%1hiT ment of God. Now the period of 
penod. which we are speaking was just the 
time when the Assyrians were vigorously en- 

1 The two lines immediately succeeding the above are : — 
" Behold, all this hath mine eye seen ; 
Mine ear hath heard and understood it well." 



THE INTRO D UCTOR Y STUD Y 113 

gaged in prosecuting their conquests in the 
countries around Judaea ; of which conquests 
the most striking and peculiar feature was de- 
portation of whole tribes and cities across the 
deserts to Assyria. The northern Certain 
kingdom fell in 722 b. c, seven years JSf^jT 
before Hezekiah came to the throne guests ' 
of Judah. Arpad had been taken by Tiglath- 
Pileser in 740 ; Damascus by the same, in 732. 
Sargon, who became king of Assyria in the 
same year in which Samaria fell, took Hamath 
in 720, and not long after advanced almost to 
the borders of Egypt in a war with the king 
of Gaza. In 712 the embassy from Mero- 
dach-Baladan, of Babylon, came to congratulate 
King Hezekiah, and obtained, as was doubt- 
less their secret purpose, a sight of his trea- 
sures. In 711 Sargon captured the Philistine 
city of Ashdod, and carried its inhabitants 
away into captivity. It was not until 701, 
when Sennacherib's invasion of Judaea was 
checked by a sudden and mysterious calamity, 
that the Assyrians ceased to threaten 

T , . .. Date of the 

Judaea and its surrounding nations. 1 passage 

_ _ above cited. 

May it not have been while these 

events were still fresh in memory, yet long 

1 These dates, which are the ones authenticated by the As- 
syrian inscriptions, are taken from Professor Driver's excel- 
lent Life and Times of Isaiah, in the Men of the Bible Series. 



114 THE BOOK OF JOB 

enough thereafter for the nation to have 
learned its lesson and settled down to a pros- 
perous peace, that the author of the Book of 
Job wrote the passage I have cited above ? 
That it was much later than Hezekiah, 

Objections to . 

putting it say when Manasseh was disquieting 
the kingdom by his wholesale experi- 
ments in idolatry, does not seem to me so nat- 
urally borne out by the general complexion of 
the book. Still less natural would it seem, es- 
pecially in view of the other characteristics of 
the book that I have traced, to make the above 
passage refer, as some do, to the captivity of 
Judah, which began in 588. A second cap- 
tivity would have been too trite a story to be 
expounded thus freshly and vividly ; and it 
would more reasonably have been employed to 
teach a national lesson, instead of the individ- 
ual or rather universal one of our book. Be- 
sides, we cannot well imagine the tranquil set- 
tled surroundings which, as we have seen, 
evidently filled the writer's consciousness, to 
have entered the work either of a captive exile 
or of a lone survivor in a desolated land ; one 
of which, if the writer lived in the Judaean cap- 
tivity, he must have been. 
comparison Jt is in no unfitting place in the 
litelaiy' 7 ' Hebrew literature if we thus regard 
works. tlie g 00 k f job as contemporary 



THE INTRO D UCTOR Y STUD Y 1 1 5 

with the great Isaiah. At what period could 
we find language or thought in greater vigor 
or beauty ? Nor does it thus disagree with 
whatever literature may, for likeness of style 
or thought, be compared with it. At 

, . . . WithPro- 

about that time, as we have seen, the verbs xxv.- 
men of Hezekiah were making their 
supplement to the Book of Proverbs ; and the 
part that they added, chapters xxv. to xxix., 
shows the same tendency to extend the ma- 
shal from a detached couplet to a continuous 
passage that we have noted in the Book of 
Job. Not yet was the section written w ith p r ^ 
that introduces the Book of Proverbs verbsi -~ ix - 
(chapters i. to ix.) ; that was the addition of 
the latest compiler, who lived perhaps during 
the reign of Josiah or a little before. 1 When 

1 " For my own part, I incline to connect the ' Praise of 
Wisdom ' with the age of Deuteronomy. Apart from the 
details to be mentioned elsewhere, it is clear (I speak now of 
Prov. i.-ix.), that the tone of the exhortations, and the view 
of religion as ' having the promise of the life that now is,' 
correspond to similar characteristics of the Book of Deuter- 
onomy. And if we turn from the contents to the form of 
this choice little book, the same hypothesis seems equally 
suitable. The prophets had long since seen the necessity of 
increasing their influence by committing the main points of 
their discourses to writing ; some rhetorical passages indeed 
were evidently composed to be read and not to be heard. It 
was natural that the moralists should follow this example, 
not only (as in the anthologies) by remodeling their wise 
sayings for publication, but also by venturing on long and 



Il6 THE BOOK OF JOB 

we compare its praise of Wisdom, chapters 
viii. and ix., with Job xxviii. (section xix.), it 
is not difficult to estimate which is the earlier. 
The Wisdom that is praised in Job as the 
most precious thing in the world is still the 
literal austere virtue toward which the early- 
sages directed their eyes ; while in Proverbs, 
though no less glowingly portrayed, it has 
passed into the feebler and less sincere artis- 
tic refinements of personification and allegory. 
In the same way of greater refinement, less 
simplicity and directness, the following pas- 
sage from Jeremiah bears the marks of a copy, 
or a later echo, as compared with the passage 
where Job opens his mouth and curses his day : 

" Cursed be the day wherein I was born : let not the day 

wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed 

x^T^-iS ; be the man who brought tidings to my father, 

compare Job, sa ying, A man child is born unto thee ; making 

section n. . . , , K n , , , \ . . 

him very glad. And let that man be as the cities 
which the Lord overthrew, and repented not : and let him 
hear a cry in the morning, and shouting at noontide; because 
he slew me not from the womb ; and so my mother should 
have been my grave, and her womb always great. Where- 
fore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, 
that my days should be consumed with shame ? " 

Jeremiah began to prophesy about 618 b. c, in 
the reign of Josiah. The way in which he 
echoes the passage in Job seems to indicate 

animated quasi-oratorical recommendations of great moral 
truths." — Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 157. 



THE INTRODUCTOR Y STUD Y \l*J 

that the latter, which then, as now, must have 
been, of all the book, the words most easily 
and universally recalled, had existed so long as 
to have become a household word. In model- 
ing his complaint after the words of the suf- 
ferer of Uz, the prophet was making the most 
vivid portrayal of his own woes, connecting 
them as he thus did with a woe that had be- 
come historic and sacred. 

Several of the psalms, notably Psalms xxxvii., 
xlix., and lxxiii., touch upon one of Job's per- 
plexing problems, the prosperity and apparent 
impunity of the wicked. They seem y ob com . 
to present a rather later phase of the iZtaiu lth 
thought than is apparent in the Book ****** 
of Job : later, in this respect, that what Job 
works out as a discovery and makes good 
against the prevailing view is in these psalms 
taken as an assured tenet of thought. Job is 
the pioneer; and these psalms, whenever they 
were written, follow in the path that his sturdy 
faith has blazed out. 

For the great ideals which the Book of Job 
contains, there is no other book, as Comparison 
Professor Cheyne has pointed out, f^^ 
which affords so striking a parallel as lxm ' 
the Book of the Servant of Jehovah, Isaiah xl. 
to lxvi. Pervading them both is the idea of a 
servant of God pure and upright yet suffering, 



Il8 THE BOOK OF JOB 

a servant so afflicted that men turn their faces 
from him, seeing in him the stroke of God's 
wrath. Job is the man of every-day life, who 
proves by his unconquerable integrity what it 
is to serve God for His own holy sake. The 
Servant of Jehovah is the idealized, mediatorial 
man, moving in some mysterious sphere above 
us and making intercession for sin, even while 
he dwells on earth with us. Job reaches by 
faith to the idea of a Heavenly Friend, in 
consequence of whose intercession he will 
some day see God a stranger no more. In 
the Servant of Jehovah is portrayed, not only a 
friend of humanity, but a somewhat developed 
plan of vicarious atonement. The ideal in the 
second Isaiah, which adapts itself 1 confessedly 
to the national needs of the Babylonian Cap- 
tivity, seems to represent a considerably later 
and more matured stage of theological thought. 



Who was the author of the Book of Job it is 
• , idle to inquire. He represents, who- 

Conclusion. 1 x 

ever he was, the ripest thinking and 
culture of an age which, just because it could 
environ such a book, we cannot forbear to pro- 
nounce great ; and with a self - abnegation 

1 Whether by anticipation or actual composition, I leave 
to the interpreters of Isaiah to decide among themselves. 



THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY 119 

which to our modern literary ambitions seems 
marvelous, he has committed his book to the 
care of the ages without a name. Nor is it 
unfitting so. The book is ours, all men's ; the 
thankful world will always care for it reverently, 
for it will never cease to be young. And as 
we look back toward its origin, we shall be 
glad to cherish this our priceless heritage, not 
in the narrow human copyright due to name or 
definite date, but as beholding therein a large 
divine Idea, shaping itself out of the nebulous 
confusion of a far distant period, and orbing 
into a perfect star, in whose unchanging light 
we, with the patriarchs, may walk. 



II 

THE POEM 



" The spirit of man is an instrument which cannot give out its 
deepest, finest tones, except under the immediate hand of the Divine 
Harmonist." — Principal Shairp. 

" He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, 
And thro'' thick veils to apprehend 
A labor working to an end." 

Tennyson. 



PERSONS 

The Lord (Jehovah). 

Job, a wealthy landholder of Uz ; a man perfect and upright. 

Eliphaz, of Teman, in Idtuncea ; a vener- 
able and devout wise man. 

Bildad, of Shu ah ; a disciple of tradition- \ Friends of Job. 

Zophar, of Naamah ; a dogmatist, elo- 
quent and impetuous. 

Elihu, son of Barachel the Buzite ; a you ig Aram<ean,full of 
zeal and self-confidence. 

The Satan, or Accuser ; the spirit that denies. 

Job's Wife. 

Sons of God, Friends, Messengers, and Spectators. 

Place : Uz, a country lying eastward of Palestine, between 

Idumcea and Chaldcea. 
Time: The patriarchal age. 



THE ARGUMENT 

I. Prologue. — i. Job's prosperous estate and his piety. 
II. His first trial determined in heaven, and inflicted on him 
in the loss of family and possessions. III. His second trial 
determined in heaven, and inflicted on his body in sore dis- 
ease. IV. His three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, 
visit him, and are silent at his affliction. (Chapters i., ii.) 

II. Job. — Opens his mouth, and I. Curses the day of his 
birth. II. Laments that he ever was bon. in. Longs for 
death, being in darkness and bewilderment as to the meaning 
of his life. (Chapter iii.) 

III. Eliphaz. — Addressing Job courteously, I. Reminds 
him of the faith in which he had formerly found comfort. 
II. Recounts a vision of his own, that revealed to him God's 
unapproachable holiness, in. Warns Job of the danger of 
anger against God's ways. iv. Directs Job to return to God 
and be blest, v. Gives sweet promise to him who accepts 
God's chastening. VI. Concludes. (Chapters iv., v.) 

IV. Job. — I. Justifies his anger, and finds Eliphaz's words 
insipid. II. Passionately desires death to release him, while 
his integrity yet remains, in. Bewails the treachery of his 
friends, and urges return of friendship, iv. Describes the 
greatness and hopelessness of his anguish, v. Resolves to 
speak out and seek explanation of God. (Chapters vi., vii.) 

V. Bildad. — Reproaching Job for his rash words, I. 
Maintains that God has dealt justly, yet promises restoration 
to Job on condition of repentance and confession. II. From 
the sayings of the ancients describes the precarious existence 
of the wicked. III. But holds out promise to Job. (Chap- 
ter viii.) 

VI. Job. — i. Acknowledging the truth of Bildad's words, 



I 26 THE BOOK OF JOB 

yet doubts how man can be just with God. II. Complains 
that God is so inaccessible, and on Bildad's data finds the 
world's government out of joint. III. In his forlorn state, 
so hopeless of maintaining his cause, longs for a Daysman, 
whom yet he does not believe in. IV. In the boldness of de- 
spair arraigns God for His seeming hardness toward the work 
of His hands, v. Implores a little rest before he goes hence. 
(Chapters ix., x.) 

VII. Zophar. — In great heat affirming that God is pun- 
ishing Job less than he deserves, 1. Reproaches Job for de- 
siring to find out God's hidden ways. n. Promises, as did 
Bildad, restoration on condition of repentance and confession 
of sin. (Chapter xi.) 

VIII. Job. — Perceiving that the friends, after all, have 
not the real secret of God, and cutting loose accordingly 
from their doctrine, I. Describes what he, in common with 
them, may hold of God's mysterious dealings. II. Accuses 
them of asserting what is wrong, in order to propitiate God. 
in. Commits himself to the firm faith that his own way of 
honest integrity will issue in salvation, in spite of the present 
seeming verdict of divine wrath, iv. Faces the stern pros- 
pect of death, and longs for return of life after the grave, 
v. Yet acknowledges how groundless is such longing in any 
analogies that we can here see or experience. (Chapters 
xii., xiii., xiv.) 

IX. Eliphaz. — Accusing Job, out of his own mouth, of 
impiety, I. Repeats his before-asserted doctrine of God's 
holiness and man's uncleanness. II. Describes, in the words 
of ancient wise men, the lifelong terror of the wicked man, 
and his inevitable doom in this world. (Chapter xv.) 

X. Job, — Reminding his friends how easy it is for the 
unafrlicted to make theories, I. Describes anew the ravages 
of his disease. 11. Affirms his certain belief that he has an 
Advocate in heaven, in which belief he is able to meet their 
reproaches calmly. III. Perceives the spiritual blindness of 
his friends, and his own truer insight, iv. In this conscious- 
ness draws resignedly near the grave. (Chapters xvi., xvii.) 



THE ARGUMENT \2J 

XI. Bildad. — Incensed that Job accounts him and his 
fellows blind, I. Describes, largely in terms of Job's afflic- 
tion, the sudden and terrible doom of the wicked. II. Seals 
it with an affirmation. (Chapter xviii.) 

XII. Job. — Recognizing to the full but not yet answering 
the friends' reproaches, I. Affirms anew that God is the Au- 
thor of his wrong, which then he describes at length as God's 
inveterate enmity. II. Bewails his loneliness, being deserted 
of all his friends ; and implores pity. in. Breaks out into 
the solemn affirmation that because his Redeemer liveth he 
shall, beyond death, see God as his Friend. IV. In this con- 
fidence warns his friends against misjudging him. (Chapter 
xix.) 

XIII. Zophar. — Replying in passionate haste, I. De- 
scribes how short-lived and unsubstantial is the triumph of 
the wicked. II. How the sweetness of sin turns to a bitter 
curse, till an outraged God sweeps away the wicked in dark- 
ness, in. Concludes. (Chapter xx.) 

XIV. Job. — Calling for attention to his answer, I. De- 
scribes his shuddering dismay at what he sees in the world, 
and shows, in contradiction to what the friends have asserted, 
how prosperously the wicked live, and how securely they die. 
II. Yet disclaims sympathy with their ways. in. Challenges 
his friends to gainsay the apparent equality of righteous and 
wicked before God. IV. Denies their assertion that the 
wicked are swept away by an earthly doom. v. Concludes 
by branding their answers as falsehood. (Chapter xxi.) 

XV. Eliphaz. — i. Accuses Job directly of sinning and 
trusting that God regards it not. II. Counts him as cherish- 
ing wicked ways. in. Gives him a final exhortation to put 
away iniquity and return to God and renewed prosperity. 
(Chapter xxii.) 

XVI. Job. — Yielding to the strenuous impulse of his com- 
plaint, I. Replies to the accusation of cherishing wickedness 
by asserting his longing to find God and present his cause. 
II. Bewails God's hidden face and inscrutable ways. ill. De- 
scribes in detail the ways in which wicked men, all around 



128 THE BOOK OF JOB 

him, are sinning with impunity, iv. Denies at length the 
common idea that the wicked are especially marked out for 
earthly doom. v. Concludes by challenging disproof of his 
words. (Chapters xxiii., xxiv.) 

XVII. Bildad. — Describes, in lofty terms, God's unap- 
proachable holiness and man's necessary impurity before 
Him. (Chapter xxv.) 

XVIII. Job. — Ridiculing with scorn the inapplicableness 
of Bildad's words, I. Continues, in similar strain, the descrip- 
tion of God's greatness and mystery, u. Yet avers that this 
description touches but the outskirts, not the secret, of His 
ways. (Chapter xxvi.) 

XIX. Job. — The friends having exhausted their argu- 
ments, Job, resuming his discourse, I. Affirms anew, with a 
solemn oath, the essential righteousness and truthfulness of 
his life. II. Describes, in correction of his friends' intem- 
perate and one-sided portrayals, the real state of the wicked, 
as insecure, without delight in God or hope of a blessed 
future, in. Sets over against this the true Wisdom of life, 
which is to fear God and shun evil. (Chapters xxvii., xxviii.) 

XX. Job. — Pursuing his discourse further, i. Looks back 
on the days of his former prosperity and honor, and describes 
his life therein, n. Contrasts the woe and obloquy of the 
present, wherein even the most degraded despise him. 
in. Solemnly calls down judgment on himself if he have 
sinned against righteousness and goodness, and with this 
noble record stands ready to meet God. (Chapters xxix., 
xxx., xxxi.) 

THE WORDS OF JOB ARE ENDED. 

XXI. Transition. — Elihu, a young speaker hitherto si- 
lent, perceiving on the one hand Job's stout justification of 
his ways, and on the other the friends' inability to answer, 
takes upon himself to set both parties right, his wrath being 
kindled. (Chapter xxxii. 1-5.) 

XXII. Elihu. — 1. Volubly describes his youth, his hesi- 
tation, and his final resolve to speak, being impelled by full- 



THE ARGUMENT 1 29 

ness of words. 11. Takes upon himself, as a Daysman, to 
represent to Job the cause of God. in. Censures Job for 
his complaint that God answers not, and shows how God 
answers both by vision and by affliction. IV. But maintains, 
moreover, that these are to be interpreted by a messenger 
from God, such as he evidently regards himself, that the 
afflicted may penitently and joyfully return, v. Concludes, 
by demanding either reply or further hearing. (Chapters 
xxxii. 6-22, xxxiii.) 

XXIII. Elihu. — Turning to the friends and requesting 
a candid hearing, 1. Condemns Job in that his defense of 
himself censures God, whereas God will not pervert judg- 
ment. 11. Shows what it is to condemn the Just and Mighty 
One, in whose hands are the destinies of all. in. Counsels 
for Job rather humility and confession of having sinned in 
ignorance, than such arrogance as his. (Chapter xxxiv.) 

XXIV. Elihu. — Addressing Job and the friends together, 
I. Shows the folly of which Job is guilty in virtually making 
his justice more than that of God, who is so high above our 
conceptions. II. Explains that oppression comes upon the 
poor because in their distress they turn not to God, who is 
always ready to deliver. (Chapter xxxv.) 

XXV. Elihu. — Calling yet for hearing, and identifying 
his notions with God's hidden knowledge, I. Shows how by 
affliction God draws the soul in discipline to Himself, and 
applies this in Job's case. II. Describes, by occasion of a 
distant storm, the mighty works of God, which are beyond 
us to comprehend. III. As the storm approaches and bursts 
upon them, he becomes confused, incoherent in speech, and 
finally breaks off abruptly in terror and abject confession of 
ignorance. (Chapters xxxvi., xxxvii.) 

XXVI. The Lord. — From the whirlwind dismissing 
Elihu with a word, and calling on Job to answer, I. Passes in 
review before Job His great creative works, — earth, sea, and 
light. 11. Mentions the great things of common nature, — 
snow, rain, and the influence of the stars, in. Describes the 
wonderful animal life, which displays varied wisdom in its 



130 THE BOOK OF JOB 

creation and adaptation to its place, iv. Calls anew on Job 
bidding him answer his own censurings of God. (Chapters 
xxxviii., xxxix., xl. I, 2.) 

XXVII. Job. — Is overwhelmed with the sense of his lit- 
tleness, and declines to answer. (Chapter xl. 3-5.) 

XXVIII. The Lord. — Calling again for answer, 1. Bids 
Job exert God's power, as he has presumed on God's judg- 
ment. 11. Describes Behemoth, which, though so powerful, 
is inoffensive and submissive to man. in. Describes Levi- 
athan, which in overwhelming strength sets at nought all that 
man can do ; how much more exalted, then, Leviathan's Cre- 
ator. (Chapter xl. 6-24, xli.) 

XXIX. Job. — Having now the sight of God for which he 
has longed, and no more hearsay, is content not to know all 
and to abide in penitent humility. (Chapter xlii. 1-6.) 

XXX. Epilogue. — 1. Job is commended before the 
friends, because he has spoken concerning God the thing 
that is right ; and at the Lord's behest he prays for them, 
who are forgiven at his intercession. 11. He is restored to 
double his former prosperity, hi. His subsequent happy 
life, and his death in a ripe old age. (Chapter xlii. 7-17.) 



JOB 



I 

PROLOGUE 
I. 

THERE was a man in the land of Uz, 
whose name was Job ; and that man 
was perfect and upright, one who feared God 

Chap. i. i. 

The narrative portions of the Book of Job, which comprise 
the Prologue (section i.), the introduction of Elihu (section 
xxi.), and the Epilogue (section xxx.), are written in prose ; 
the rest (except the section headings) in poetry. To the Eng- 
lish reader the difference in tone, character of subject-matter, 
and diction, are so plainly discernible that the distinction be- 
tween the two kinds of discourse cannot easily be mistaken. 
The adoption of the paragraph form for the one, and of the 
parallelistic form for the other, is as natural, and as fitting to 
the thought, in a translation as in the original. It is this fact 
which makes Hebrew poetry, as poetry, so susceptible of 
reproduction in another language : the poetic form depends, 
for the most part, on principles essential to the thought, as 
passion, imagery, and elevation, rather than on rules of quan- 
tity and assonance. The rhythm is such as our impassioned 
prose makes to itself, — fashioned, that is, by the impelling 
spirit within the thought to a regularity of flow and accent, 
though not a strictly measured regularity like that of our 



132 THE BOOK OF JOB L 

and shunned evil. And there were born to 
him seven sons and three daughters. And 5 
his property was seven thousand sheep, and 
three thousand camels, and five hundred 
yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, 
and a very great household ; and this man 
was the greatest of all the sons of the East. 10 
And his sons used to go and make a feast 

Chap. i. 2-4. 

metre. Its manifestation, the parallelism, is a thought-meas- 
ure rather than a form-measure. 

Line i. The most probable location of the land of Uz, 
which at best is matter of conjecture, is indicated in the table 
of persons prefixed to the poem. What is of chief impor- 
tance to note here is, that the poet has laid his scene in a 
land outside of Palestine, with its national traditions of law 
and ritual; and thus he has chosen a fitting place for an ac- 
tion that deals with the pure essentials of religion and morals. 

3. Job's character, too, exemplifies that devout righteous- 
ness which is well-pleasing to God, whatever the external 
form of service ; compare Acts x. 35. In the life of Job 
the poet evidently intends to portray the plain and univer- 
sal ideal of a good life, such as every one can understand. 
The word perfect is not to be complicated with modern dog- 
matic subtilties ; it corresponds not inaptly to Horace's integer 
vitce^ being the adjective of which integrity is the substantive. 

6. The word translated sheep designates in Hebrew both 
sheep and goats, corresponding to the German kleinvieh, 
" small cattle." 

9. The household included family, servants, and depen- 
dents. 

10. The term sons of the East is a general designation for 
all who lived in the regions eastward and southeastward of 
Palestine. 



I. PROLOGUE I33 

at the house of each on his day ; and they 
would send and invite their three sisters to 
eat and drink with them. And so it was, 
that whenever the feast-days came round, 15 
Job sent and sanctified them ; and he rose 
early in the morning and offered burnt offer- 
ings according to the number of them all ; 
for Job said, " Haply my sons have sinned 
and blasphemed God in their hearts/' Thus 20 
did Job continually. 

11. 
Now there was a day when the sons of 

Chap. i. 4-6. 

12. It would appear from the expression in section ii. 2, 
that the day observed by each of the sons was his birthday. 
Seven times a year, therefore, such a feast-day would come 
round. 

16. Job sanctified his children by some simple ceremony 
of washing and change of garments, probably, such as is in- 
culcated in Genesis xxxv. 2. 

17. The form of sacrifice here mentioned was not such as 
is laid down in the ceremonial law of Moses, but the simple 
patriarchal form, such as from earliest times expressed the 
primitive impulse to worship. 

20. The word translated blasphemed, which occurs again 
in lines 43 and 109, where it is translated renounce, and in line 
119, where it is translated curse, primarily means bless. It 
probably got its secondary meaning from the idea of giving 
the good-by blessing, hence bidding farewell, renouncing. 

22. Sons of God is an ancient term — see Genesis vi. 2 — 
designating the spirits who attend Him and work His wilL 



134 THE BOOK OF JOB L 

God came to present themselves before the 
Lord ; and among them came also Satan. 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Whence 25 
comest thou ? " 

And Satan answered the Lord and said, 
" From roaming to and fro in the earth, and 
from walking up and down in it." 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Hast thou 30 
considered my servant Job, that there is 
none like him in the earth, a man perfect 

Chap. i. 6-8. 

24. The word here translated the Lord is the Hebrew 
name Jehovah. Outside of the Prologue and Epilogue the 
name occurs only in section viii. 20. As the interlocutors are 
all dwellers in lands outside of Palestine, it is natural that 
they should apply to the Deity designations more general 
than that of the national God of the Hebrews ; the writer, 
however, being a Hebrew, has no such reason for avoiding 
that name in the Prologue and Epilogue. 

The Hebrew word Satan is literally the Satan, that is, the 
Accuser ; being at the time this Prologue contemplates, a 
designation rather than a name. 

28. Satan's first account of himself betrays that lack of 
dignity and stability which Goethe has taken as the basis for 
his portrayal of Mephistopheles. He is a wandering spirit, 
unattached to any allegiance, unsteadied by any principle ; his 
only occupation being, apparently, to appease the restlessness 
of an active mind, as well as he can, by incessantly roaming 
over the earth and observing its affairs ; see Introductory 
Study, p. 33. From this trait of unrest, the unrest of a spirit 
who has lost his moorings, all other traits of Satan's charac- 
ter, as here brought to light, are naturally traceable. 

31. Not the author alone, but the Lord Himself ac- 



I. PROLOGUE I35 

and upright, who feareth God and shunneth 
evil ? " 

And Satan answered the Lord and said, 35 
" Doth Job fear God for nought ? Hast 
Thou not Thyself set a hedge about him, 
and about his house, and about all that is 
his, on every side ? Thou hast blessed the 
work of his hands, and his property is 40 
spread out in the land. But put forth now 
Thy hand, and touch all that he hath, — and 

Chap. i. 8-1 i. 

knowledges Job's good life ; nor does Satan deny it. That 
Job is a true and upright man is to be accepted as an un- 
questionable element, so to say, in the hypothesis with which 
we set out. And yet it is just this element which Job's friends, 
merely on the ground of his affliction, deny. 

36. Satan's question opens the whole argument, or prob- 
lem, of the poem. It discloses, for one thing, the weak point 
of the current Wisdom philosophy, which, associating as by 
an unfailing law of nature prosperity with righteousness and 
destruction with wickedness, opens the way for a merely 
selfish barter of religious service for worldly wages ; and 
thus the question says, in effect, why not be righteous when 
righteousness pays so well ? But for another thing, the ques- 
tion reveals Satan's character, which, as the sequel shows, is 
in polar contrast to that of Job. A half wondering, half 
sneering, wholly selfish question, the question of one who, 
having no allegiance outside of self, has no ability to under- 
stand unselfishness, it says in effect, Is there such a thing as 
disinterested integrity, goodness without thought of reward, 
possible in the world ? See Introductory Study, p. 19. 

42. And see if he will not renounce Thee. This is virtu- 
ally a wager, as if he had said, " My word for it, he will re- 



I36 THE BOOK OF JOB I 

see if he will not renounce Thee, to Thy 
face/' 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Behold all 45 
that he hath is in thy power ; only, on him- 
self put not forth thy hand." 

And Satan went forth from the presence 
of the Lord. 

And it was the day when his sons and his 50 
daughters were eating and drinking wine in 
the house of their brother the first-born. 

And there came a messenger to Job, and 
said, " The oxen were ploughing, and the she- 

Chap. i. u-14. 

nounce Thee." The disposition to wager, to try experiments 
with the future, is quite in accord with the author's concep- 
tion of Satan's character. Having neither fixed principle in 
himself nor connection with the Source of order outside, 
Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, 
but he cannot foresee. Goethe attributes, by a fine insight, 
this same wagering disposition to his Mephistopheles : — 

" The Lord. — Though still confused his service unto Me, 
I soon shall lead him to a clearer morning. 
Sees not the gardener, even while buds his tree, 
Both flower and fruit the future years adorning ? 

Mephistopheles. — What will you bet ? There 's still a chance 
to gain him, 
If unto me full leave you give, 
Gently upon my road to train him ! n 

On renounce, see note, line 20. 

50. The day, — namely, the birthday of the eldest brother ; 
see note on line 12. 



I. PROLOGUE I37 

asses feeding beside them ; and the Sabaeans 55 
fell upon them and took them away ; and the 
youths they killed with the edge of the 
sword ; and I, only I alone, am escaped to 
tell thee." 

While this one was yet speaking, another 60 
came and said, " Fire of God fell from 
heaven, and burned the sheep and the 
youths, and consumed them ; and I, only I 
alone, am escaped to tell thee." 

While this one was yet speaking, another 65 
came and said, "The Chaldaeans made three 
bands, and rushed upon the camels, and took 
them away ; and the youths they killed with 
the edge of the sword ; and I, only I alone, 
am escaped to tell thee." 70 

While this one was yet speaking, another 
came and said, " Thy sons and thy daugh- 

Chap. i. 14-18. 

55. Sabceans, — predatory hordes from the mountainous 
regions southwest of Uz. In section iv. 39, the same people 
are represented as traveling in caravans. 

56. The youths, — that is, the servants who attended the 
flocks. 

61. The expression fire of God is probably meant to des- 
ignate lightning, though there is something surprising, not 
to say preternatural, in its destroying seven thousand sheep. 
The storm in which it came we may regard as identical with 
the hurricane reported by the fourth messenger. 

66. Chaldceans, — marauding bands from the region north 
and northeast of Uz. 



138 THE BOOK OF JOB L 

ters were eating and drinking wine in the 
house of their brother the first-born ; and 
behold, a great wind came from beyond the 75 
wilderness, and smote the four corners of 
the house, and it fell upon the young men, 
and they are dead ; and I, only I alone, am 
escaped to tell thee." 

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and so 
shaved his head, and fell upon the ground 
and worshiped, and said, "Naked came I 
out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I 
return thither. The Lord gave, and the 
Lord hath taken away : blessed be the 85 
name of the Lord ! " 

In all this Job sinned not, nor attributed 
aught unbeseeming to God. 

Chap. i. 18-22. 

75. Great winds from beyond the desert lying east and 
northeast of Uz are still a much dreaded and not unusual 
phenomenon of that region. 

78. To report the four messages in identical words is 
not so much a crudeness as a naivete of the ancient narrative 
method, which is not at all reluctant to repeat the same 
words, and perhaps looks upon such repetition as a grace, 
when the words are applicable to the same situation. 

82. Job's attitude in this first trial is that of firm, almost 
proud loyalty to God. He regards the stroke, indeed, as di- 
rectly from God ; but he has not yet begun to realize the 
depth and the involvement of his visitation. 

88. Aught unbeseeming, — that is, unworthy or ungodlike. 
The word so translated means literally insipidity ox folly, and, 



I. PROLOGUE 139 

III. 

Again it was the day when the sons of 
God came to present themselves before the 90 
Lord ; and among them came also Satan, 
to present himself before the Lord. 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Whence 
comest thou ? " 

And Satan answered the Lord and said, 95 
" From roaming to and fro in the earth, and 
from walking up and down in it" 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Hast 
thou considered my servant Job, that there 
is none like him in the earth, a man perfect 100 
and upright, who feareth God and shunneth 
evil ? and he still holdeth fast his integrity, 

Chap. ii. 1-3. 

as applied to man, is a not unfrequent term for wickedness. 
It is the quality in God's dealings concerning which Job begins 
to question, as soon as the greatness of his affliction has be- 
come fully evident to him ; see section vi. 75, " Is it beseem- 
ing to Thee that Thou shouldst oppress ? " As yet, however, 
he views his stroke as only the right of God to take away 
what He has given. 

102. The question whether Job would hold fast his integ- 
rity was the point at issue between the Lord and Satan. It 
is worth while to note the simplicity and sumcingness of the 
old conception, which the world does not well to outgrow, 
that integrity or wholeness of the man is identical with loy- 
alty to God. The man who renounces God goes to wreck as 
a man. 



140 THE BOOK OF JOB I. 

though thou didst move me against him, to 
destroy him causelessly/' 

And Satan answered the Lord and said, 105 
" Skin for skin : all that a man hath will he 
give for his life. But put forth now Thy 
hand, and touch his bone and his flesh, — 
and see if he will not renounce Thee, to Thy 
face." no 

And the Lord said to Satan, " Behold, he 
is in thy hand ; but spare his life/' 

And Satan went forth from the presence 
of the Lord, and smote Job with grievous 
boils, from the sole of his foot to his crown. 115 

Chap. ii. 3-7. 

104. It will be serviceable, in estimating the justice of 
Job's complaint, to bear in mind that God Himself is repre- 
sented as acknowledging that the visitation was causeless, 
that is, not just to Job's deserts. In estimating himself as 
unjustly punished, Job sees as God sees. 

106. Skin for ski?i, — presumably a proverbial expression. 
Its uncouthness, as used in such majestic Presence, accords 
with the mocking, detracting, impudent character of Satan, 
and perhaps furnishes the suggestion of Goethe's conception 
of Mephistopheles as incapable of lofty and dignified speech, 
"Verzeih', ich kann nicht hohe Worte machen." Nowhere 
in the Prologue to Faust is the genius of Goethe more ex- 
quisitely displayed than in the shrewd, cutting, yet essentially 
low language and imagery in which Mephistopheles , thoughts 
are everywhere conveyed. It is of sarcasm and impudence 
all compact. 

114. These grievous boils, with the signs mentioned by 
Job subsequently, indicate that the disease with which Satan 



I. PROLOGUE 141 

And Job took him a potsherd to scrape him- 
self with, and sat among the ashes. 

And his wife said to him, " Dost thou still 
hold fast thine integrity ? Curse God, and 
die/' 120 

And he said to her, "Thou speakest as 
one of the foolish women speaketh. What ! 
shall we receive good from God, and shall 
we not receive evil ? " 

In all this Job sinned not with his lips. 125 

Chap. ii. 8-10. 

afflicted him was black leprosy, or elephantiasis, which, of all 
diseases, was universally regarded as the most indubitable 
sign of God's direct stroke. It is the cruel irony of Satan to 
work as if he were God. Blake, in his picture of this scene, 
represents Satan as wielding God's natural agencies. 

117. The ashes, — that is, the heap of ashes and refuse, out- 
side the gates of the city, to which in Oriental lands the leper 
is banished. 

118. With true feminine tendency to think in the concrete 
and leap straight to conclusions, Job's wife traces his afflic- 
tion directly to its personal cause, having no disposition to 
philosophize, or to leave matters in abeyance. 

119. Curse God, — the same word elsewhere translated blas- 
pheme or renounce ; see note on line 20. The abrupt imper- 
ative here and the evident resentment that fills her words 
seem to call for the translation curse as best representing the 
animus of her suggestion. 

122. The word foolish was the common Hebrew word for 
vile or wicked. 

123. As when God removed His gifts, so now when He sends 
positive afflictions, Job's first attitude is strong and undoubt- 
ing loyalty. Browning, in " Ferishtah's Fancies " (The Melon- 
Seller), has thus drawn the lesson of this reply of Job: — 



142 THE BOOK OF JOB 



IV. 

Now three friends of Job heard of all this 
evil that had befallen him, and came, each 
from his place : Eliphaz the Temanite, and 
Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naama- 
thite. And they made an appointment to- iso 

Chap, il n. 

" ' How 
Enormous thy abjection, — hell from heaven, 
Made tenfold hell by contrast ! Whisper me ! 
Dost thou curse God for granting twelve years' bliss 
Only to prove this day's the direr lot ? ■ 

" Whereon the beggar raised a brow, once more 
Luminous and imperial, from the rags. 
* Fool, does thy folly think my foolishness 
Dwells rather on the fact that God appoints 
A day of woe to the unworthy one, 
Than that the unworthy one, by God's award, 
Tasted joy twelve years long? ' n 

It is the every-day monotony of pain, here just beginning, 
and with this the friends' hard reports of God, that rouses by 
degrees an agony of inquiry and doubt. 

127. And came ; but owing to the distance, and the leisurely 
modes of travel and of sending reports in the East, very 
likely the " months of wretchedness," of which Job speaks in 
section iv. 66, intervened before the friends reached him. 

Each from his place. Teman, in Idumaea, was noted, as 
would appear from Jeremiah xlix. 7, for the wisdom of its in* 
habitants, — a distinction which Eliphaz well bears out. We 
may perhaps regard Teman as the renowned seat of a kind of 
university, if we may use so modern a term, where Wisdom 
was especially cultivated. Of the dwelling-places of Bildad 
and Zophar nothing positive is known. 



I. PROLOGUE I43 

gether to come and mourn with him and 
comfort him. And when they raised their 
eyes from afar and knew him not, they lifted 
up their voice and wept. And they rent 
every man his mantle, and they sprinkled 135 
dust on their heads toward heaven. And 
they sat with him on the ground seven days 
and seven nights ; and none spake word to 
him ; for they saw that his affliction was 
very great. uo 

Chap. ii. 11-13. 

132. Knew him not, — that is, so disfigured was he already 
with the ravages of disease, that they did not recognize the 
countenance they had so familiarly known in the past. 

138. None spake word to him. The friends' shock of sur- 
prise was also a shock of disappointment. They had arranged 
to go and comfort him ; but when they found him stricken 
with elephantiasis, the special scourge of God, how could 
they comfort whom God had afflicted ? So the silent days 
gradually become ominous ; from sympathizers the frienHs 
are changed to spectators, as they see that God's favor is 
withdrawn. It is like what Isaiah describes, liii. 3, 4, of our 
treatment of the servant of Jehovah : " He is despised and 
rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ; 
and we hid as it were our faces from him" The reason, too, 
is the same : " We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted." 

At this point the view into heaven is withdrawn, and the 
scene is left with its two principal elements, their attitudes 
already indicated : Job, ignorant of the Satanic origin of his 
affliction, plunged into an abyss of punishment which, even 
by the confession of God, is wholly without ground in justice ; 
and the friends, who, judging by the outer sight of Job's 



144 THE BOOK OF JOB 

disease instead of the inner recognition of Job's unshaken 
integrity, are already withdrawing sympathy and becoming 
estranged. It is a supreme test alike of the loyalty of Job to 
God, and of the current philosophy of life. Will Job prove 
that his service of God is not for reward, but because of his 
deep hunger for divine righteousness and communion ? And 
if so, will he not reach a higher point than has been found in 
that philosophy which counts on prosperity, or shuns de- 
struction, as its terms of allegiance ? 



II 

JOB 

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed 
his day. And Job answered and said : 

i. 
" Perish the day wherein I was born, 
And the night which said, A man-child is 

conceived. 
That day — let it be darkness ; 5 

Chap. hi. 1-4. 

The opening of Job's first speech reveals something of the 
obscure march of his soul during those silent days. From 
being proudly trustful in God his musing spirit has sunk 
back into passionate despair and blank bewilderment. It 
seems to be the poet's intention to portray him as thrown for 
the moment out of his orbit into a condition too elementary 
for hope ; back of trust, back of religion, into that crude 
necromantic superstition which curses days and deals in the 
obscure mysteries of materialism. From this deep starting- 
point he is to find his way upward to light and God again. 

Line i. Cursed, — not the word used by Job's wife, sec- 
tion i. 119, but the usual word for imprecation on what is base 
and worthless. 

2. Job answered. In the Hebrew conception an answer 
could be made, not only to the words of another, but to any 
experience or state of things with which the soul was con- 
fronted. Hence Job meets his affliction with an answer. 



146 THE BOOK OF JOB II. 

Let not God inquire after it from above, 

And let not light shine upon it. 

Let darkness and shadow of death reclaim it ; 

Let cloud rest upon it ; 

Let darkenings of the day terrify it. 10 

That night — thick darkness seize upon it ; 

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year ; 

Let it not come into the number of the months. 

Lo ! that night — let it be barren ; 

Let no joyful voice come therein. 15 

Let them curse it who curse days, 

Who are skilled to rouse up leviathan. 

Chap. hi. 4-8. 

6. Inquire after it, — that is, so as to take account of it as 
a day of history. It is to have no office in the sum of things, 
and hence no record. 

8. Reclaim it, — that is, let that day revert to the chaos 
that belonged to time before the creation. 

10. Darkenings of the day, — eclipses, which in unscientific 
times and lands have always been regarded with terror as of 
mysterious and sinister portent. 

11. Thick darkness, — that is, let it be plunged into a deeper 
than natural night, the night, as it were, of night. 

14. Barren, — that is, of births. The joyful voice, in the 
next line, means the voice of gladness over new-begun lives. 

16. Who curse days, — magicians who were supposed by 
their spells and incantations to make days unlucky. 

17. Rouse up leviathan, — according to an ancient solar 
myth, the storm-dragon that swallows up the sun in cloud. 
Perhaps the same myth is alluded to in the " monster of the 
deep," section iv. 86, and in the "flying serpent," section 
xviii. 25. See also Isaiah li. 9, and Jeremiah li. 34. 



II. JOB 147 

Let the stars of its dawning be darkened ; 
Let it look for light and there be none ; 
And let it not see the eyelids of the morning. 20 
Because it shut not the doors of the womb that 

bare me, 
Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes. 

11. 
" Wherefore did I not die from the womb, — 
Come forth from the belly, and breathe my 

last ? 
Why were knees ready to meet me, 25 

And why the breasts, that I might suck ? 

Chap. iii. 9-12. 

20. The eyelids of the morning. This beautiful figure, 
which is used again in section xxviii. 73, has been trans- 
planted into English by Milton, Lycidas, 26 : — 

" Under the opening eyelids of the Morn 
We drove afield." 

21. The womb that bare me, — literally, "my womb." In 
this and the next line this strophe reaches its first definite 
goal of feeling. So far Job's plaint has been only the spon- 
taneous overflow of anguish, venting itself blindly on the day 
of birth, but as yet evolving no meaning out of the stroke. 
Job is almost "stunned from his power to think; " but even 
in his wild and aimless expression, being unchecked, there is 
a use, as an assuager of pain and a means of bringing the 
calmer mind. Compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, v. 2 ; xvi. 
4. The first eighteen sections of In Memoriam are strik- 
ingly parallel in spirit to sections ii. and iv. of this Book of 
Job, as portraying the slow emergence of a soul out of the 
chaos of despair, and into a definite conception of its evil case. 



I48 THE BOOK OF JOB II. 

For then had I lain down and been quiet ; 

I had slept, — then would there be rest for 

me, — 
With kings and counselors of the earth, 
Who built themselves ruins ; 30 

Or with princes who had gold, 
Who filled their houses with silver ; 
Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, — 
As infants that never saw light. 
There the wicked cease from troubling, 35 

And there the weary are at rest. 
The prisoners are at ease together ; 
They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. 
Small and great — both are there ; 
And the servant is free from his lord. 40 

Chap. iit. 13-19. 

27. In this thought of rest and oblivion, which is the key- 
note of this second strophe, Job's plaint begins to gather to 
its focus, though as yet he has formed no theory of his afflic- 
tion. 

30. Built themselves ruins, — that is, palaces that decayed 
and passed away, became ruins, after their builders' death. 
Job is thinking of the kings and counselors of so long ago that 
not only themselves but their works have passed into obliv- 
ion ; it is for such intensified oblivion that he longs. 

35. Thei'e. It is a state rather than a place that Job is 
contemplating, — a state of utter nothingness, which, by con- 
trast with the present, seems to have all the sweetness of 
quiet, peace, and freedom. His thoughts go no farther^ than 
the phenomenal aspect of death : — 

11 There is no other thing express'd 
But long disquiet merged in rest." 



II. JOB 149 



III. 

"Wherefore giveth He light to the wretched, 
And life to the bitter in soul ? — 
Who long for death, and it cometh not, 
And dig for it, more than for hid treasures, 
Who are glad, even to exulting, 45 

And leap for joy, when they find the grave, — 
To a man whose way is hid, 
And whom God hath hedged in ? 
For instead of my food cometh my sighing, 

Chap. iii. 20-24. 

41. So at last Job's obscure meditations concentrate them- 
selves into a wherefore. In this depth of suffering, life has 
become an insoluble problem. 

47. The construction of this line is joined on to that of line 
41 : " Wherefore giveth He light . . . and life ... to a man 
whose way is hid." In this and the next line Job reaches 
his defining-point, the real secret of his anguish of soul. He 
has lost the clue to God and God's ways, being plunged into 
an abyss of punishment for which he can find no cause. The 
way that he has hitherto taken, with its consciousness of di- 
vine companionship and friendship (compare section xx. 7), 
is suddenly closed ; there is no longer any outlook. From 
this point he must grope his way, a long and weary road, be- 
fore he can say, u He knoweth the way that is mine ; " see 
section xvi. 18, and compare xx. 122. 

49. Instead of 'my food. The word translated "instead of" 
may also mean " before." The exact expression is obscure, 
but the general meaning is that sighing fills as prominent a 
place in life as food once did, giving woe as food used to give 
pleasure and nourishment. 



150 THE BOOK OF JOB II. 

And poured out like water are my groans. so 
For I feared a fear, and it hath overtaken me, 
And what I dreaded is come upon me. 
I was not heedless, nor was I at ease, 
Nor was I at rest, — yet trouble came." 

Chap. hi. 24-26. 

51-54. I feared a fear. It is a common Hebrew idiom to 
use a verb thus with a cognate noun. These lines, while 
they reveal the genuineness of Job's piety, also betray the 
comparatively crude nature of it hitherto. A touch of the 
same quality has already been shown in his solicitude for his 
sons, section i. 19, his fear lest some unsuspected sin, like a 
grain of sand in the machinery, may have destroyed the deli- 
cate adjustment of their souls to God. Here, too, his piety 
has been largely an uncertain, uncomfortable fear. It has 
been negative rather than positive, a prophylactic against evil 
rather than an unruffled confidence in God, an anxious en- 
deavor to avoid some blow in the dark rather than going on 
to triumphs in light. One important result of Job's trial will 
be to change his piety from negative to positive, from fear to 
love ; so that what Satan intended for his destruction will 
not only confirm his integrity, but exalt and refine his whole 
relation to God. It is in this sense that Satan's tearing-down 
may work also to building-up, — that, as Goethe says (Pro- 
logue to Faust) " er muss, als Teufel, schaffen." 



Ill 

ELIPHAZ 

Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and 
said : 

" If one essay a word with thee, wilt thou be 

offended ? — 
Yet who can forbear speaking ? 



" Behold, thou hast admonished many, 

And thou hast strengthened feeble hands ; 5 

Chap. iv. 1-3. 

Eliphaz, being the oldest and wisest of the friends, is in 
some sense their spokesman, and strikes the keynote for all. 
His present speech goes over nearly the whole ground of the 
friends' argument. 

Line 2. Job has paused in the expectation of sympathy; 
he has counted on this consolation at least that friends are 
around him, and that they will comfort him. Instead of 
sympathy, however, he meets a courteous word deprecating 
offense, which of course implies that the speaker must as a 
disagreeable duty use rebuke and admonition. 

4. Behold, thou hast admonished many. This is true. Job 
has heretofore been not only a believer but a teacher of the 
very same doctrine that Eliphaz now brings before him ; Eli- 
phaz is passing in review before Job the latter's own philos- 
ophy of life. 



152 THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

Thy words have confirmed the faltering, 
And bowing knees hast thou made strong ; 
But now it is come upon thee, — and thou 

faintest ; 
It toucheth thee, and thou art confounded. 

Is not thy piety thy confidence ? 10 

Thy hope — is it not the integrity of thy ways ? 

Bethink thee now : who that was guiltless 
hath perished, 
And where have the upright been cut off? 
As I have seen, — they that plough iniquity, 

Chap. iv. 4-8. 

8. The ground of Eliphaz's reproach is that Job fails to 
apply his own key of life when the real difficulty comes, has 
shown himself lacking in one of the acknowledged tests of 
the philosophic mind, see Proverbs xxiv. 10. As yet Job has 
uttered no rebellious word ; his offense consists in being be- 
wildered, in not being certain what it all means, — a real of- 
fense in the eyes of such a sage as Eliphaz, for it is a virtual 
impeachment of the adequacy of the current Wisdom. 

10. The word translated//^ is the same that is elsewhere 
translated fear. Fear of God and integrity, Job's standard of 
life heretofore, ought to be his ground of confidence now ; 
he ought to rest in them, and believe that they will receive 
their natural reward in God's favor. 

12-15. As the basis of his argument, Eliphaz lays down 
the universal law of sowing and reaping, making no applica- 
tions, but leaving Job to get what comfort or warning he can 
from it. If Job is really upright, there is a gleam of comfort : 
the word perished, which is the strongest Hebrew word for 
destruction, may leave the implication open that at some 
time his suffering will be turned, and not end in death. On 
the other hand, the most natural implication is clearly oppo- 



III. ELIPHAZ 153 

And that sow wickedness, reap the same. 15 

By the breath of God they perish, 

And by the blast of His anger they are con- 
sumed. 

The lion's cry, and the voice of the roaring 
lion, 

And the teeth of the young lions, are broken. 

The strong lion perisheth for lack of prey, 20 

And the lioness's whelps are scattered abroad. 

11. 

" To me once a word came stealthily, 
And mine ear caught the whisper of it. 

Chap. iv. 8-12. 

site to this ; for if a man reaps what he sows, then the fact 
that he is reaping misery is a prima facie indication that he 
has somehow sown evil. Eliphaz and his friends err, not in 
their general assertions, which are true enough, but in taking 
too readily for granted that Job's affliction is a reaping. 
Their theory of the world is not broad enough to make it 
anything else, nor are they humble enough to own ignorance 
of its cause. 

18-21. Under the figure of vanquished lions, Eliphaz rep- 
resents that the wicked, however strong and fierce, must some 
time meet their overthrow. It is a rhetorical amplification 
which spreads out far beyond Job's case ; his wickedness, if 
he has any, is by no means lionlike. 

22. Seemingly aware that he has left the implication too 
violent, and that indeed he must needs explain how it is pos- 
sible that there can be an equivalent in sin for so much afflic- 
tion as Job's, Eliphaz relates a vision that he once had, which 
revealed to him the innate and inevitable sinfulness of the 



154 THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

In wandering thoughts from visions of the 

night, 
When deep sleep falleth upon men, 25 

Fear came upon me, and trembling, 
Which made all my bones to shake. 
Then a spirit glided before my face, — 
The hair of my flesh rose up, — 

Chap. iv. 13-15. 
creature. On this vision the author of " Mark Rutherford " 
comments : " Eliphaz is partly a rhetorician, and, like all per- 
sons with that gift, he is frequently carried off his feet and 
ceases to touch the firm earth. His famous vision in the 
night, which caused the hair of his flesh to stand up, is an ex- 
aggeration, and does nothing but declare what might as well 
have been declared without it, that man is not just in the 
eyes of perfect purity." 

24. Wandering thoughts. These two words are necessary 
to represent a single Hebrew word. It means the mingled 
and confused thoughts that come without direction or con- 
trol of the will. Delitzsch translates gedankengewirr. 

26. The vision, far from involving Eliphaz's real commu- 
nion with the supernatural, was evidently neither sought, nor 
expected, nor enjoyed. It came and went, wholly beyond his 
will or desire ; and simply left him proud of having received 
such a communication, as if he were a specially favored repos- 
itory of hidden truth. With this compare how Job meets the 
theophany at the end of the book, and how reverent and 
humble it leaves him. 

28. Nor did the vision in any sense bring God near. It 
was only a spirit that Eliphaz saw, an intermediate agency; 
and even the spirit's words but serve to remove God to an 
inaccessible distance. The God here contemplated is the 
God of the cool theorizer, not the God of palpitating human 
life. 



III. ELIPHAZ 155 

It stood still, but its form I could not discern, 30 

A figure before mine eyes ; 

— Silence — and I heard a voice : 

1 Shall mortal man be just before God ? 

Shall the strong man, before his Maker, be 

pure ? 
Behold, in His servants He putteth no 

trust, 35 

And He imputeth error unto His angels ; 
How much more them that dwell in houses of 

clay, 
Whose foundation is in the dust ; 

Chap. iv. 16-19. 

30. "There is no such weird passage," says Professor 
Cheyne of this description, " in the rest of the Old Testament. 
It did not escape the attention of Milton, whose description 
of death alludes to it : — 

1 If shape it could be called that shape had none, 
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed.' 

(Par. Lost, ii. 266.)" 

37. The implication is, that however a man may seem 
righteous by his own standard, by the standard of God's un- 
approachable purity he must necessarily be corrupt. Thus 
the conception of justice and purity is so sublimated in de- 
gree as to become practically different in kind ; so unattain- 
able that man cannot choose but err, and that any punish- 
ment inflicted upon him cannot be other than right. This 
is the beginning of that wholesale justification of God at 
the expense of facts and consciousness, that Job afterward 
detects and reproves (section viii. 63-76), and that Eliphaz 
finally reduces to an absurdity (section xv. 6-21). 



156 THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

Who are crushed like the moth ; 

Who are beaten in pieces from morning to 

evening, 40 

Who, for lack of one that regardeth, perish 

for ever. 
Is not their tent-cord within them plucked 

away ? 
They die, and not in wisdom/ 

in. 

" Call now : is there that answereth thee ? 

Chap. iv. 19 — v. 1. 

42. Their tent-cord. A metaphor familiar enough in Ori- 
ental countries, where life is passed in tents, and where the 
plucking away of the cord that supports the frail structure 
lays the slight tenement in ruins at once. A striking image 
of the precarious human life. 

43. They die, and not in wisdom ; a euphemism for dying in 
misery and woe. To a student of Hebrew -philosophy, who 
identifies goodness with wisdom, and wickedness with folly, 
the expression would be suggestive. 

The oracle of Eliphaz's vision condemns all men alike, not 
because they are sinners merely, but because they are crea- 
tures, and especially, mortal creatures. Job's consciousness 
of rectitude has no word to say in the matter ; under such a 
judgment his only recourse would be to call himself a sinner, 
and to call his punishment just, and this his honesty with 
himself will not let him do. 

44. Eliphaz thinks a good deal of his vision ; for the fact 
that he is the recipient of supernatural communications is to 
him evidence that he is in the way of true insight into the 
deeps of life. To this happy condition he now contrasts Job's 
forlorn case, by challenging the latter to obtain a similar 



III. ELIPHAZ 157 

And unto whom, of the holy, wilt thou 

turn ? 45 

Nay, rather, anger destroyeth the foolish man, 

Chap. v. i, 2. 

oracle ; implying that Job, not being, so to speak, in the 
circuit of mystic communication, is therefore not in the way 
of God's favor. Eliphaz attributes this, as line 46 implies, 
to Job's anger at God's dealings, which shuts his heart to 
celestial visitants ; his idea being evidently somewhat like 
Tennyson's, in In Memoriam, xciv.: — 

H In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 
My spirit is at peace with all. . . . 

" But when the heart is full of din, 
And doubt beside the portal waits, 
They can but listen at the gates, 
And hear the household jar within." 

45. The holy, — that is, probably, angelic spirits, sons of 
God, such as are mentioned, section i. 22, 89 ; for there is no 
evidence that Eliphaz had any conception of spirits of de- 
parted saints. 

46. Still carefully avoiding any direct accusation of Job, 
Eliphaz deprecates that anger which not only closes the spir- 
itual ear, but, so to say, burns out the life, disintegrates the 
inner man. It is as a diligent student of spiritual things, 
who has reached the secret of life in calm, that Eliphaz 
speaks. At the same time it is evident that his soul has 
never been ploughed by affliction, as Job's is ; for if it had 
been, he would not speak so dispassionately, almost lightly, 
of Job's profound disturbance, as if it were mere vexation or 
fretfulness, which he should school himself to avoid. Eli- 
phaz's use of the word anger evidently stings Job; it is the 
only word that Job takes up and answers, section iv. 2, when 
he speaks again. 



158 THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

And the simple are slain by passion. 
I myself saw a foolish man taking root, 
But straightway I cursed his habitation. 
His children are far from succor ; 50 

And they are crushed in the gate, 
And there is none to deliver. 
Whose harvest the hungry man devoureth, 
And taketh it even fronVthe thorns, 
And the snare gapeth for their substance. 55 
For evil goeth not forth from the dust, 

Chap. v. 2-6. 

48. Taking root, — that is, becoming settled in life and 
prosperity, in seeming exception to the rule that anger and 
passion are disintegrating forces. 

49. I cursed his habitation ; — that is, his dwelling-place was 
desolated so suddenly that I recognized it as blasted by the 
judgment of God. These words seem to refer to some old 
custom of cursing where God has evidently set the marks of 
His wrath ; and indeed, does not the friends' whole treatment 
of Job (compare section i. 138, note) illustrate the same 
spirit ? 

51. The gate of an Eastern city was the place where justice 
was administered, or counsel obtained ; but to these whom 
Eliphaz describes it is no refuge, because their oppressors, or 
perhaps their rightful accusers, are so numerous and over- 
whelming. 

54. In his greedy hunger he gleans even the last stray ears 
of the harvest from the thorn-hedges that surround the fields. 

56-59. Drawing a lesson from the seemingly hard fate of 
the "foolish" man, but with a strong implication for Job, 
Eliphaz maintains that the cause of our evils and afflictions is 
to be sought, not in the world outside of us, nor in the acci- 
dents of time, but in our own nature, in antecedents as rigid 



III. ELIPHAZ 159 

Nor is it from the ground that trouble spring- 

eth; 
For man is born to trouble, 
As the sons of the flame fly aloft. 

IV. 

" But I, I would seek unto God, 60 

Chap. v. 6-8. 

as birth and heredity. The assertion that man is born to 
trouble, as to an inevitable fate, does not hang together very 
logically with Eliphaz's other doctrines, nor with his glowing 
promises to Job. The author of " Mark Rutherford " says, 
" A certain want of connection and pertinence is observable 
in him. A man who is made up of what he hears or reads 
always lacks unity and directness. Confronted by any diffi- 
culty or by any event which calls upon him, he answers, not 
by an operation of his intellect on what is immediately before 
him, but by detached remarks which he has collected, and 
which are never a fused homogeneous whole. In conversa- 
tion he is the same, and will first propound one irrelevant 
principle and then another, — the one, however, not leading to 
the other, and sometimes contradicting it." It is this lack of 
relevance and sequence, possibly, which Job has in mind in 
his reply (section iv. 50, 51) when he calls for "forthright 
words." 

59. Sons of 'the flame,— that is, sparks. This fine Hebrew 
metaphor is worth perpetuating in a literal translation. 

60 sqq. In directing Job to God, Eliphaz leaves his rather 
rhetorical remarks so vague and general in their application 
that Job takes up the same line of truth in a subsequent speech 
(section vi. 2-35), and turns it in a quite different direction. 
The couplet lines 62, 63 Job quotes almost verbatim in sec- 
tion vi. 18, 19, where see note. 



l6o THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

And unto the Mightiest would I commit my 

cause ; 
Who doeth great things, and unsearchable, 
Marvelous things, and that without number. 
Who giveth rain upon the face of the earth, 64 
And sendeth water upon the face of the fields ; 
To set the lowly in a high place, 
And mourners are exalted to safety. 
He bringeth to nought the devices of the 

crafty, 
That their hands can accomplish nothing real. 
He ensnareth the wise in their own cunning, 70 
And the counsel of the subtile overreacheth 

itself. 
They meet with darkness in the daytime, 

Chap. v. 8-14. 

61. The common Hebrew word for God, Elohim, is de- 
rived from a root meaning mighty. As the word in line 61 is 
the plural of the word for God in the previous line, it would 
seem to be intended both as a variation and as a climax on 
the other name ; hence the translation adopted here. 

69. A recognition of the logic of events, which makes all 
endeavors not in the current of truth and righteousness, how- 
ever for a time they may seem to prosper, to pass away into 
unreality, being annulled or overruled for good. 

The word translated [no] " thing real " is one of the most 
abstract words in Hebrew, and seems to have been a philo- 
sophical term evolved by the Hebrew Wisdom. It is some- 
times equivalent to truths sometimes to reality. The evolu- 
tion of this term indicates considerable age and maturity in 
the Wisdom philosophy when this book was written. 



III. ELIPHAZ l6l 

And at noontide they grope as in the night. 
So from the sword, from their mouth, 
And from the hand of the strong, — He rescu- 
eth the needy. 75 

So there is hope for the weak, 
And iniquity shutteth her mouth. 

v. 

" Behold, blessed is the man whom God cor- 

recteth ; 
Therefore despise not thou the chastening of 

the Almighty. 
For He it is that woundeth and bindeth up ; so 
He bruiseth, and His hands make whole. 
In six troubles shall He deliver thee, 
And in seven shall no evil touch thee. 
In famine He shall redeem thee from death, 
And in war from the power of the sword. ss 

Chap. v. 14-20. 

78. In this strophe, in which the present section reaches 
its most rhetorical and beautiful expression, Eliphaz antici- 
pates the doctrine of God's chastening, which Elihu after- 
wards carries out to greater length. True as it is in the ab- 
stract, it errs in presupposing Job as needing to be restored 
and corrected by chastisement. Here is the sticking-point 
with Job. Ke is not conscious of a sinfulness that merits 
such extremity of punishment, and he is too honest with him- 
self to acknowledge such sin. So the chastisement does not 
chasten ; and Eliphaz's words are in effect urging Job to 
purchase God's favor by an insincere confession. 



1 62 THE BOOK OF JOB III. 

When the tongue scourgeth thou shalt be hid, 
Nor shalt thou be afraid of devastation when 

it cometh. 
At devastation and dearth thou shalt laugh ; 
Nor hast thou aught to fear from the beast of 

the earth. 
For thou hast a league with the stones of the 
field, 90 

And the beasts of the field shall be at peace 

with thee. 
And thou shalt know that thy tent is peace, 
Shalt review thy household, and miss nothing. 
Thou shalt know also that thy seed is numer- 
ous, 
And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. 95 
Thou shalt go to the grave in a ripe old age, 
As the sheaf is garnered in, in its season. 

Chap. v. 21-26. 

89-91. Eliphaz has a profound idea of the harmony of man 
with nature ; all things animate and inanimate strike hands 
in the covenant of the righteous with God. 

92 sqq. It will be observed that the supreme blessing here 
contemplated by Eliphaz is essentially the restoration of 
Job's former state, the blessing of prosperity and peace and 
long life and numerous offspring. After such blessings Job 
does not seem to seek ; one result of his suffering is that all 
other desires give way in time to the supreme longing for 
God's presence. It is in this longing that Job disappoints 
Satan and leaves his friends far behind ; such pure aspiration 
they neither cherish nor appreciate. 

96, 97. In these lines Eliphaz promises Job what actually 



III. ELIPHAZ 163 



VI. 

" Lo, this ; we have searched it out ; so it is ; 
Hear it, and know thou ; it is for thee." 

Chap. v. 27. 

comes to pass. Other promises, too, made by the friends on 
the condition of Job's confession of sin (see, for instance, 
section v. 11-14; vii. 31-33; xv. 52, 58, 59), and fulfilled 
though he continues to assert his righteousness, demonstrate 
the poetic justice of his restoration, as recorded in the Epi- 
logue. 

98. Lo y this ; we have searched it out. Eliphaz speaks doubt- 
less for all the students of wisdom ; and this speech of his, 
so strangely lacking in application, and seeming to contain so 
many presuppositions of Job's case, may be so merely as be- 
ing a review of the Wisdom philosophy. In it we find men's 
highest interpretation of life, as held in Job's day, an inter- 
pretation heretofore shared by the patriarch himself, until his 
very affliction, with its passionate discoveries of faith, carried 
men's thoughts to a reach higher still. 



IV 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

i. 

" Oh that mine ' anger ' were weighed, were 
weighed, 

And, laid in the balances against it, my wretch- 
edness ! 

For so it would be heavier than the sand of the 
seas ; 

Therefore it is, my words have been rash. 5 

For the arrows of Shaddai are within me, 

Chap. vi. 1-4. 

Line 2. The " anger " that Eliphaz has deprecated, section 
iii. 46 (see note there), Job justifies, by referring to the unex- 
plained visitation that compels it. Looking into his affliction 
honestly, and interpreting it according to the only data he 
has, as God's especial displeasure, he sees only too much 
reason for being profoundly disturbed and embittered in soul. 
He is slow, however, to push his misery to its personal 
Source ; it is not until line 83 that he can gird himself up to 
brave his reverential piety and address a remonstrance to 
God Himself. 

6. Shaddai, — the word elsewhere translated " the Al- 



IV. JOB 165 

Whose poison my spirit drinketh up ; 
God's terrors are in war-array against me. 

Doth the wild ass bray over the fresh grass ? 
Or loweth the ox over his fodder ? 10 

Can it be eaten — what is tasteless, unsalted ? 

Chap. vi. 4-6. 
mighty;" a semi-poetic name of God, used more frequently 
in Job than in other books of the Bible. Job seems thrown 
back for the time, by his affliction, to the conception of God 
as mere power ; he cannot trace motive or design in such a 
visitation ; to him God is the Almighty One, who without 
giving a reason does with mortal man as He will. 

8. In war-array. This is Job's most frequent figure of 
God's attitude toward him ; see section vi. 107 ; xii. 22-24. 
He feels himself besieged by mysterious thronging- hosts. 

9 sqq. The trenchant interrogations fit well with the in- 
tensity of Job's emotion, quite in contrast to the leisurely 
amplifying rhetoric of Eliphaz. See note, section iii. 56-59. 
" The sixth and seventh chapters," says the author of " Mark 
Rutherford," " are molten from end to end, and run in one 
burning stream." 

9. Job is not crying out for nothing ; if things were as they 
should be, or even as explicable as Eliphaz would make out, 
he would not complain. There is a mystery in his affliction 
that no interpretation has touched. 

11. The thought of the rich, toothsome food over which 
the beasts are content rouses by contrast the thought of the 
spiritual food that is set before Job. Eliphaz has passed in 
review the Wisdom philosophy before him, and here is his 
judgment upon it : it is insipid, like tasteless, unsalted food. 
Not that Eliphaz's words are untrue : they simply do not 
reach Job's case, do not find him, — 

" And common is the commonplace, 
And vacant chaff well meant for grain." 

Job's new experience needs some new view of truth to ex- 



1 66 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

Or is there savor in the white of an egg ? 

My soul refuseth to touch ! 

They are as loathsome food to me. 

ii. 

" Oh that my request might come, is 

And that God would grant my longing ! 
That it would please God to crush me, 
That He would loose His hand and cut me off. 
For then it would still be my comfort, — 
Yea, I should exult in pain, though He spare 

not, — 20 

That I have not denied the words of the Holy 

One. 
What is my strength, that I should endure ? 
And what mine end, that I should be patient ? 

Chap. vi. 6-ii. 

plain it, some vitalized interpretation to which his awakened 
soul can answer. 

17. Job's anguish, spiritual and physical, is suggestively in- 
dicated in that strong word crush. What a wish ! 

19-21. In these words we read the strength of Job's loy- 
alty. The allegiance to what is godlike is the root even of 
his longing for death ; he wishes to be cut off before tempta- 
tion has overcome him, to preserve his integrity intact even 
at the expense of life. This, after his wife has exhorted him 
to " curse God and die." 

22. This note of self-distrust, as Job looks forward to a life 
of pain, deepens our sense of his heroic loyalty. To be pa- 
tient without any outlook, to endure without divine support, 
— Job does not promise it, and he trembles at the prospect ; 
but none the less he sets his feet on the toilsome way. 



IV. JOB 167 

Is my strength the strength of stones ? 

Is my flesh of brass ? 25 

Nay, is not my help within me gone, 

And well-being driven away from me ? 

in. 

" Kindness from his friend is due to the de- 
spairing, 
Who is losing hold of the fear of the Almighty. 
My brethren are deceitful, like a brook, 30 

Like the channel of brooks that pass away ; 
Which are turbid by reason of ice ; 

Chap. vi. 12-16. 

27. Well-being, — the word elsewhere translated " reality" 
or " truth ; " see note, section iii. 69. Does Job mean that 
he has lost the clue to the truth, the reality of things, so that 
even patience and endurance may have no significance ? 

28. It is from this view of friendship that the way begins to 
diverge by which Job arrives in time to a point wholly oppo- 
site to theirs, where he is fully fixed by faith on God ; see 
section x. 45,46; xii. 25-56. That God has afflicted him is 
no reason why friendship should be withdrawn ; rather he 
needs friends the more as he feels himself slipping away from 
his old moorings in God. He desires simply that their natural 
affection remain undisturbed by what they see of his disease, 
and be kept faithful to his essential righteousness. 

30. But they are not to be trusted to keep friendship in 
such adversity as this. Like a brook ; the simile derives its 
suggestiveness from the Oriental brooks, or wadies, which in 
a rainy season suddenly become torrents, and in the dry sea- 
son disappear utterly. In the time of thirst, when they are 
most needed, they are least trustworthy. 



1 68 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

Whereon the snow falling hideth itself. 

What time heat toucheth them, they van- 
ish ; 

When it is hot, they are dried up out of their 
place. 35 

The wayfarers along their course are turned 
aside ; 

They go up into the wastes, and perish. 

The caravans of Tema looked ; 

The companies of Sheba set their hope upon 
them ; 

They were ashamed because they had trusted ; 

They reached the spot, and were dismayed. 41 

See now, — ye are just like that ; 

Ye have seen a terror, and are confounded. 
Is it because I have said, Give to me ? 

Chap. vi. 16-22. 
33. One is reminded of Burns's familiar lines, — 

" Or like the snow falls in the river, 
A moment white — then melts for ever." 

39. The companies of Sheba, — the same people is referred 
to as the Sabaeans, mentioned in section i. 55. 

43. The terror that the friends have seen is the awful spec- 
tacle of God's hand working His wrath in Job's leprosy; and 
it confounds them because they suppose they must put their 
condemnation where God has put His displeasure ; compare 
note, section iii. 49. Recall also how they were taken aback 
when they saw Job's affliction, section i. 138; see note there. 
Their friendship, instead of being spontaneous and natural, 
as Job desires, is at the mercy of their theology. 

44. Job's plea for sympathy is the more reasonable because 
kindness costs them nothing ; it is simply following nature. 



IV. JOB 169 

Or, Bestow of your wealth for my sake ? 45 

Or, Deliver me from the hand of the enemy, 
And from the oppressor's hand redeem me ? 

Teach me, and I will hold my tongue ; 
And make me understand wherein I have erred. 
How cogent are forthright words ! 50 

But your upbraiding — what doth it prove ? 
Do ye think to censure words, 
When they are a despairing man's words to the 

wind ? 
Nay, ye would even cast lots for the orphan, 
And make traffic over your friend. 55 

But now, be pleased to look upon me, 

Chap. vi. 22-28. 

50. Forthright words, words that go straight to their mark, 
without evasion or covered meaning, are what Job, true to 
the universal experience of affliction, longs for ; and against 
such he contrasts what to his sick sensitiveness seems their 
" upbraiding, " or perhaps we might render it their "insinua- 
tions." He is irritated because they speak in vague and gen- 
eral terms, begging the question of his guilt, and yet making 
nothing pointed and clear ; see note, section hi. 56-59. 

53. Job feels that the words pressed from him by pain are 
no conclusive index of his true self. They are but " words 
to the wind ; " and to found a reproof on such indications is 
to him the extremity of heartlessness. 

55. In his anguish Job states his friends' hardness with 
cutting strength, and doubtless hyperbolically ; yet is not 
their ignoring of truth for the sake of a theory, and their 
haste to sacrifice friendship in order to get on the right side 
of God, equivalent in a sense to " making traffic " over their 
friend ? 



170 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

And surely I will not lie to your face. 
Return, I pray ; let there be no hardness ; 
Yea, return ; — I am still righteous therein. 
Is there perverseness in my tongue ? 60 

Cannot my taste discern what is wicked ? 

Chap. vi. 28-30. 

57. Will not lie, — that is, he will not represent himself be- 
fore them as he is not ; his sin and his integrity will alike be 
open and manifest, to be recognized as they are. Their con- 
duct toward him virtually assumes that all his professions of 
righteousness are lying, — disproved, that is, by his leprosy. 

58. Return, — that is, from their coldness and suspicion to 
the confidence that they had in him before his affliction ; be 
just to the facts that they have always seen. It is a plea to 
be held innocent until he is proved guilty. 

Hardness, — the same word translated perverseness in 1. 60. 
It seems to refer to that warped, twisted, perverted mind due 
to prejudice and bigotry ; and Job's plea is a plea for candor. 

61. My taste, literally my palate, meaning here, not the aes- 
thetic sense that we associate with taste, but spiritual sense 
and insight. Job avers that his spiritual sense is not blunted ; 
that when he says he is righteous it is from a real discern- 
ment, as keen and true as it ever was, of good and evil. 
Both Job and the friends recognize that one's spiritual dis- 
cernment of truth may be impaired or destroyed, so that evil 
and good may cease to appear in their real guise ; and Job is 
evidently solicitous to keep this fine sense intact in all his 
affliction ; see section viii. 23, 24 ; x. 40 ; xix. 4, 5. He 
comes to see clearly after a while that the friends' spiritual 
insight is not true ; see section x. 59, 60, 70 ; and Eliphaz 
likewise seems to think \\\?X Job has blinded himself by sin, — 
see section xv. 20. Which party has the real " perverseness " 
will appear in the final event. 



IV. JOB 171 

IV. 

" Hath not man a hard service on the earth ? 
And are not his days as the days of a hireling ? 
As the servant, who panteth for the shadow, 64 
And as the hireling, who longeth for his wages, 
So I am made heir to months of wretchedness, 
And nights of distress are doled out to me. 
When I lie down I say, How long till I arise ! 
And the evening stretcheth itself out, 
And I am wearied with tossings till the dawn. 
My flesh is clothed with worms and crusts of 
earth ; 71 

Chap. vii. 1-5. 

62. Job's affliction opens his heart to sympathize with all 
who suffer, and with mankind in general, whose lot is a hard 
one ; and thus he feels himself a representative of humanity. 
We are reminded of Tennyson's similar use of his sorrow to 
broaden his sympathy in In Memoriam, xcix. : — 

" O wheresoever those may be, 

Betwixt the slumber of the poles, 
To-day they count as kindred souls ; 
They know me not, but mourn with me." 

A hard service ; — the Hebrew word refers to such a service 
as a soldier has to fulfill ; a war-fare, war-service. 

64. For the shadow, — that is, on the sun-dial, the shadow 
that indicates the time to cease work. 

66. This would seem to imply, what is likely enough, that 
a considerable time had elapsed from the beginning of his 
affliction to the coming of the friends. See note, section 
i. 127. 

67. Doled out, slowly and reluctantly, as it were, every one 
counting for its utmost in pain. 



172 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

My skin closeth up, and breaketh out afresh. 
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle ; 
And they are consumed away, without any 

hope. 
Remember Thou, that my life is a breath ; 75 
Never again shall mine eye see good. 
The eye of him that looketh after me shall not 

espy me ; 
Thine eyes will seek me, — and I am not. 
The cloud vanisheth away, and is gone ; 
So he that goeth down to Sheol shall not come 

up again ; so 

Chap. vii. 5-9. 

71, 72. These lines describe what are said to be verita- 
ble characteristics of elephantiasis, or black leprosy. The 
" crusts of earth " refer to the hardened ash-colored scab that 
forms over the sores. 

73. To look back upon, and in comparison with their fruit- 
lessness of result, his hopeless days seem very short, however 
irksome in the passing. Perhaps they seem so short because 
he has " taken wings of foresight " and can look upon them 
as it were from a distance, or in the large view which we ap- 
ply to the sum total of human life in general. He identifies 
himself with the race. 

75. The thought of his brief life and its hopelessness gives 
him the first impulse to address himself directly to God, 
though not at first with remonstrance. It is his first approach 
to that mystery of death, the idea of which plays such a large 
part in the achievements of his faith throughout the poem. 
See Introductory Study, p. 56. 

80. Sheol, — the Hebrew word designating the unseen 
abode of the dead ; a neutral word presupposing neither mis- 



IV. JOB 173 

Never again shall he return to his house, 
Nor shall his place know him any more. 



" So therefore I, I will not restrain my mouth ; 

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit ; 

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 85 

Am I a sea, or a monster of the deep, 
That Thou settest a watch over me ? 
When I say, My bed shall comfort me, 
My couch shall help me bear my complaints, — 

Chap. vii. 10-13. 

ery nor happiness, and not infrequently used much as we use 
the words "the grave," to denote the final undefined resting- 
place of all. 

83. Face to face with death, as the utmost that suffering 
can do, Job resolves to speak out what is in him. " It is 
stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated explorer of Africa, 
that the blow of a lion's paw upon his shoulder, which was 
so severe as to break his arm, completely annihilated fear." 
Job's trembling solicitude lest he should " lose hold of the fear 
of the Almighty " (compare section ii. 51-54 ; iv. 29) is passing 
away as he faces death, and in its place is rising a boldness 
before God which mounts in his next speech to the amazing 
height of his everlasting No ; see section vi. 70-85, and note 
thereon. It is a time for nothing but utter honesty with self 
and with God. 

S6. Am I a sea ? — that is, one of the great objects or 
forces of nature, on which supposably God must exert tran- 
scendent power, to tame or restrain it. His suffering, which 
of course he has to refer to God, seems out of all proportion 
to his own importance ; why such attention to a creature so 
insignificant ? 



174 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

Then Thou scarest me with dreams, 90 

And with visions dost Thou terrify me. 

So that my soul chooseth strangling, 

Yea, death, rather than these my bones. 

I am filled with loathing ; let me not live al- 

way ; 
Cease from me ; for my days are a breath. 95 
What is mortal man, that Thou magnifiest 
him, 
And that Thou settest Thy thought upon him ? 
That Thou visitest him every morning, 
And every mgment dost try him ? 
How long wilt Thou not look away from me, 100 
Nor let me alone till I swallow my spittle ? 
If I have sinned, what could I do unto Thee ? 

Chap. vii. 14-20. 

90. Even sleep, filled as it is with the vivid and distressing 
dreams of sickness, fails to bring oblivion of pain. Blake 
illustrates this verse by a figure of Satan hovering in the 
guise of God over Job's couch. 

93. These my bones, — referring to his emaciation, one of 
the marks of his disease, which left him a skeleton. 

96. A reminiscence of Psalm viii. 4, in a kind of " bitter 
parody," as it has been called. For whereas in the psalm 
the feeling is grateful wonder that God, the Creator of the 
worlds, should condescend to such a lowly creature as man, 
here the feeling is perplexity that the same great God should 
be so relentless in pursuing man with affliction. 

101. Till I swallow my spittle, — that is, the smallest ap- 
preciable time. Probably an expression in common use. 

102. The greatness of Job's punishment, so far beyond 
what natural and spiritual law can explain or demand, gives 



IV. JOB 175 

Watcher of men, wherefore hast Thou set me 
as Thy mark ? 

So that I am become a burden to myself ? 

And why wilt Thou not pardon my transgres- 
sion, 105 

And take away mine iniquity ? 

For now I shall sleep in the dust, 

And Thou wilt seek for me, — and I am not/' 

Chap. vii. 20, 21. 

this visitation the look of vindictiveness, as if God were mak- 
ing some conduct of Job a personal matter ; so the question 
what Job could possibly do to injure God is not unnaturally 
suggested. A question that in the abstract men had pon- 
dered and answered; see section xv. 2-5; xxiv. 8-15, and 
compare Psalm xvi. 2, 3. The distance between God and 
men is so vast that neither can sin injure nor righteousness 
benefit Him, — 

" For merit lives from man to man, 
And not from man, O Lord, to Thee." 

In this idea of God, as throned high above the creature's 
merits and sins, Job and the friends are not as yet at issue ; but 
the latter acquiesce in it as a necessity of the creature's lowli- 
ness and impurity (see section iii, 35, 36; ix. 26-31 ; xvii. 6, 7), 
while they make sin a natural, self -punishing thing (compare 
section iii. 14, 15) : Job, on the other hand, turns straight to 
God, seeking for light, interpretation, communion, while he 
mourns over His remoteness (section ii. 47, 48), and cannot 
rest until he has come to see God as He is (xxix. 10). 

105. Job seems to claim pardon almost indignantly, as if it 
were a right. Even the God who will by no means acquit 
(see Exodus xxxiv. 7) may be called on for pardon; and 
much more, when the sin is below consciousness, not to be 
merciful is not to be just. 

107. For now I shall sleep in the dust ; — this, after all, is 



176 THE BOOK OF JOB IV. 

what makes Job's inquiries and expostulations so natural. 
So near death as he is, the logic of his case demands pardon ; 
for what is the significance of torturing by pain a life so soon 
to go out ? The thought of a life beyond has not risen to 
Job's mind out of this enigma. 



V 

BILDAD 

Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said : 

" How long wilt thou speak such things ? 
For the words of thy mouth are a mighty- 
wind. 

i. 

" Will God pervert the right ? 
Or will the Almighty pervert justice ? 5 

If thy children have sinned against Him, 
So hath He given them over into the hand of 
their transgression. 

Chap. viii. 1-4. 

Line 2. Bildad replies with considerably more heat than 
Eliphaz ; Job's words have irritated and disquieted him, hav- 
ing roused him to indignation, as a strong wind makes a man 
shelter and defend himself. 

4. The mere fact that Job is bewildered and asks God for 
explanation of his affliction astonishes Bildad, for it seems to 
impugn God's justice, the fundamental thing in Bildad' s 
creed. His philosophy is not so broad as Eliphaz's, but per- 
haps all the more clear ; and with a kind of brutal directness 
he blurts out what is in his mind; though with some rem- 
nants of courtesy he applies his -explanation to the children 
who were so mysteriously slain, and forbears to accuse Job, 
except by implication. 



178 THE BOOK OF JOB V. 

But thou — if thou wilt seek earnestly unto 

God, 
And to the Almighty make supplication, — 
So be that thou art pure and upright, — 10 

Verily then He will awake for thee, 
And will restore the habitation of thy right- 
eousness. 
Then, though thy beginning be small, 
Thine end shall increase exceedingly. 

11. 
" For inquire now of the generation gone, m 

Chap. viii. 5-8. 

8-14. This very accurately describes both Job's attitude 
toward God and what afterward befell him ; only it contem- 
plates Job's approach to God as a return from sin and rebel- 
lion rather than as the hunger of an unselfishly righteous 
heart. We see through it all the irreconcilable difference 
between the friends' point of view and Job's ; the friends 
reasoning that Job is a leper, and therefore, of course, a sin- 
ner ; Job asserting, I am a righteous man, and my leprosy 
is a mystery that I cannot penetrate. 

10. This is put in slyly, as a delicate implication that Job 
is not all that he should be in purity and uprightness. 

12. Observe that Bildad, like Eiiphaz, sets before Job 
merely a promise of reinstatement, restoration to worldly 
prosperity; compare note on section iii. 92 sqq. This is all 
that the friends contemplate, and is their measure of blessing. 
Job's ideal is much higher, being measured by nothing short 
of God's presence. 

1 5. Bildad is a disciple of tradition, drawing his philosophy 
of life from the sayings and precepts of the ancients, the well- 



V. BILDAD 179 

And give heed to the research of their fa- 
thers, — 
For of yesterday are we, and know nothing ; 
For our days are a shadow on the earth ; — 
Will they not teach thee, speak to thee, 
And from their heart bring forth sayings ? — 20 
1 Doth the rush grow tall without mire ? 
Doth the marsh-grass thrive without water ? 
While yet in its greenness it is uncut, 
Yet sooner than all herbs it drieth up. 
So are the ways of all that forget God ; 25 

And the hope of the unholy shall perish. 
Whose confidence is cut asunder, 
And whose trust is but the spider's house. 
He leaneth upon his house, and it standeth 

not ; 
He graspeth it fast, and it abideth not. 30 

Chap. viii. 8-15. 

tested wisdom of the ages. It is worthy of remark that the 
wisdom that he represents is already regarded as venerable, 
and as having reached ripened and irrefragable results. 

21. Here the sayings of the fathers begin, and they are not 
without great beauty and impressiveness. Nor is exception 
to be taken to them. Job assents to them at once (section vi. 
2), and when he comes to sum up the significance of the 
world his result is nearly the same as Bildad's (section xix. 
14-19). In fact, these sayings embody truths that have be- 
come truisms ; they are perhaps the oldest statement of what 
we call the logic of events. It was a great discovery of man, 
and fresher in Job's days than now, to know that the powers 
of history and the world were with good, and against wicked- 



180 THE BOOK OF JOB V. 

Green he is, in the sunshine, 

And his sprouts shoot forth over his garden ; 

Over heaps of stone his roots are entwined ; 

He looketh upon a house of stone. 

If he be destroyed from his place, 35 

It straightway disowneth him — I never saw 

thee. 
Behold, this is the joy of his way ; 
And out of the dust shall others spring up/ 

in. 

" Behold, God will not despise the perfect man, 
Nor will He grasp the hand of the wicked. 40 
While He filleth thy mouth with laughter, 
And thy lips with a song of joy, 
They that hate thee shall be clothed with 

shame, 
And the tent of the wicked shall be no more." 

Chap. viii. 16-22. 

ness. Our book takes this idea, the law of spiritual gravita- 
tion, so to say, in the tenacity of its prime vigor, before the 
exceptions, as exemplified in Job's life, came to be recog- 
nized ; and it is apparently one object of the author to submit 
this spiritual law to its needed regulative of doubt. 

39. God will not despise the pei'fect man ; but apparently 
God despises Job, for Job is suffering God's distinctive 
scourge. The ending of Bildad's speech, courteous though it 
is, comes weighted with this implication, and conditions its 
promise on his being pure and upright (1. 10). The courtesy 
is thus only a clumsy disguise to what is really cutting and 
harsh. 



VI 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 



" Of a truth I know it is so ; 

And yet — how shall a mortal be just with God ? 

Chap. ix. i, 2. 

The vague and aimless questioning which Eliphaz's lecture 
roused in Job is in the present section precipitated, so to say, 
by the influence of Bildad's rigid assertion of divine justice, 
into sharp doubt and despair. There is no other section of the 
poem in which the tide of passion and remonstrance rises so 
high. It retraverses in the main the field of thought that 
was opened in section iv., only with more assurance and defi- 
niteness ; being, as it were, a higher sweep of the wave of 
Job's meditations toward the culmination of his problem, and 
with negative beginnings of a solution. 

Lines 2, 3. To Bildad's assertion that God is just, and 
that He gives to righteous and wicked their deserts, Job ac- 
cords undoubting assent. That is not his difficulty ; the real 
question regards man's relation to God, man's justice, which 
from Job's point of view of a just man suffering unmerited 
punishment is wholly obscure. The question asks in effect, 
What does justice mean ? 

3. Both Eliphaz (section hi. 34) and Bildad (xvii. 6, 7) ask 
the same question, but with a different setting and involve- 
ment. They contemplate God as so unapproachably pure 



1 82 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

Should he desire to contend with Him, 
He could not answer Him one of a thousand. 5 
Wise in heart, and mighty in strength, — 
Who hath defied Him, and remained secure ? 
Who removeth mountains, and they know not 
That He hath overturned them in His anger. 
Who maketh the earth to tremble from its place, 
And the pillars thereof are shaken. 11 

Who speaketh to the sun, and it shineth not ; 
And setteth a seal round about the stars. 
Who stretcheth out the heavens alone, 
And walketh upon the heights of the sea. 15 
Who maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, 
And the secret chambers of the south. 

Chap. ix. 3-9. 

that man's utmost righteousness can be only a far-away re- 
flection, a broken light. Job's question, on the other hand, 
implies that man cannot be just because he cannot be sure 
of the standard of justice. This undeserved and apparently 
unmotived suffering of his confuses all known standards ; it 
makes God seem to wanton in power for the mere power's 
sake. 

4. To contend, — that is, on equal terms, as men contend in 
law. A legal term. 

8 sqq. In these descriptions Job has in mind merely God's 
power, so vast as to be wholly beyond human explanation, in 
motive or principle. 

12. A description of eclipse, which in unscientific nations 
is always one of the most impressive and mysterious phe- 
nomena of nature. 

17. The secret chambers of the south are the supposed quar- 
ter whence the rain comes. 



VI. JOB 183 

Who doeth great things, past searching out, 
And marvelous things, past numbering. 



" Lo ! He goeth by me, and I see Him not ; 20 
He passeth along, and I perceive Him not. 
Lo ! He snatcheth away, and who will restrain 

Him? 
Who will say to Him, What doest Thou ? 
God will not turn away His wrath ; — 
Beneath it bowed the helpers of Rahab ; 25 

How much less shall I answer Him, — 
Choosing out my words against Him ! 

Chap. ix. 10-14, 

18, 19. These lines are quoted almost verbatim from Eli- 
phaz, section iii. 62, 63, though with a somewhat different 
connection and implication. 

20. I see Him not, — this is the source of Job's deepest 
trouble ; compare section ii. 47, 48. He has lost the stand- 
ard of life, the means of tracing God ; to what there is in 
man, in his ideals and definitions, God no longer corresponds. 
Tennyson's address to his dead friend, 

" But thou art turn'd to something strange, 
And I have lost the links that bound 
Thy changes," 

comes to mind as a parallel to Job's feeling as he mourns 
over God's withdrawn friendship. God is simply a vast 
Power working in the dark, inscrutable, unrestrainable. 

25. Rahab, — literally the proud one. There is here an al- 
lusion to some legend, now lost, of some Titanic war against 
God, such as is apparently alluded to in Genesis vi. 4. Per- 
haps Bildad's words, section xvii. 3, refer to the same event. 



1 84 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

Whom, though I were righteous, I could not 

answer ; 
I must supplicate Him that judgeth me. 
If I should call, and He should answer me, 30 
I would not believe that He listened to my 

voice, — 
He — who overwhelmeth me with tempest, 
And multiplieth my wounds without cause. 
Who suffereth me not to recover my breath, 
For He surfeiteth me with bitternesses. 35 

Is the question of strength, — behold, the 

Mighty One He ! 

Chap. ix. 15-19. 

29. Job's righteous cause ought to give him the right to 
answer as defendant ; instead of that he must entreat as cul- 
prit. The Accuser is also the Judge, setting Mis own stand- 
ard of judgment, and accountable to none. This consider- 
ation ploughs deeply; in fact, does it not strike the rock 
against which all interpretations of the world on the mere 
score of human justice and desert must be shattered ? 

31. I would not believe ; the next line tells why, — because 
deeds, louder than words, disprove all that his words could 
say. 

33. Without cause, — this consideration defines Job's issue 
with the friends ; and we, who know the Prologue, know that 
Job, on God's own confession (section i. 104), has pronounced 
truly. This is no plea of sinlessness ; Job would not make 
such a plea ; but a complaint of multiplied wounds, — punish- 
ment far beyond its desert. All sense of proportion between 
desert and punishment is lost in this experience. 

36-47. In these lines Job reaches his most agonized height 
of doubt, and his words evince, from the human point of 



VI. JOB 185 

Of judgment, — ■ Who will set Me a day ? ' 

Were I righteous, mine own mouth would con- 
demn me ; 

Perfect were I, yet would He prove me per- 
verse. 

Perfect I am, — I value not my soul — I de- 
spise my life — 40 

It is all one — therefore I say, 

Perfect and wicked He consumeth alike. 

If the scourge destroyeth suddenly, 

Chap. ix. 19-23. 

view, how insoluble is the world-problem on the lines of hu- 
man righteousness and reward, work and wages. The same 
truth is recognized, from the divine side, by the address from 
the whirlwind ; see section xxvi. 145, 146. 

37. Who will set Me a day ? — that is, to come into judg- 
ment with Me. This is God's supposed answer, implying 
His transcendence, so great that no one will venture to ap- 
proach Him with a plea. 

38. Mine own month, being so infinitely crude and unskilled 
in speech, as compared with God, could only demonstrate in- 
feriority in argument. 

40, 41. With full view of its awful boldness, and of its 
possible utter futility, Job yet ventures to assert himself, to 
bring his integrity into the field with God. It is an amazing 
conception, — the mortal thus in strife with the Creator. 
The beginning of this bold resolve we have already seen, in 
section iv. 83-85, in Job's determination to speak out ; see 
note there. 

41. // is all one, — that is, whether Job be crushed now or 
writhe in anguish a little longer. While he has voice, there- 
fore, he will lay open the thoughts of his honest soul. 



1 86 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

He mocketh at the dismay of the innocent. 
The earth is given over into the hands of the 
wicked ; 45 

The face of its judges He veileth ; — 
If it is not He, who then is it ? 

in. 

" My days are swifter than a courier, 
Are fled away, and have seen no good. 

Chap. ix. 23-25. 

44. He mocketh, — hard words these, but on the principle 
by which Job is judging God, not beyond the data of actual 
experience and observation. Indeed, from the Hebrew point 
of view, which attributes natural events directly to God, Job is 
saying no more than do the moderns when they call Nature 
" red in tooth and claw." Nor can we well escape Job's con- 
clusion, if we judge merely by the standard that his friends 
press upon him. 

45. Job speaks bitterly and too strongly here ; but he is 
looking at a real fact, which later he expands in calmer mood ; 
see sections xiv. 12-69; xv ^ 34~93- 

46. The face of its judges He veileth, — that is, so that abso- 
lute truth and right are matter of uncertainty, to be estab- 
lished, if at all, by dialectics, and not seen face to face. And 
this is true if, as the friends maintain, God is afflicting Job in 
order to define sin and righteousness. 

47. Job has of course no means of tracing Satan's agency ; 
but the asking of this question betrays what a pain it is to him, 
as well as what a dark problem it raises, to attribute such 
things to God. 

48 sqq. In more plaintive mood Job recurs to the thought 
of the brevity and fruitlessness of life, a thought already 
broached in section iv. 73, 74. " The complaint of Job is not 



VI. JOB 187 

They have swept by, like the ships of reed, 50 

As the eagle swoopeth upon its prey. 

If my thought be — I will forget my plaint, 

Change my aspect, and be cheerful, 

Yet I shudder at all my pains ; 

I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent ; 55 

I, I must be counted guilty ; — 

Wherefore then this bootless labor ? 

If I should wash myself in snow, 

And cleanse my hands with lye, 

Even then Thou wouldst plunge me into the 

ditch, 60 

Chap. ix. 26, 31. 

merely of the brevity of human life ; it is that he can see no 
reason for that brevity ; it is that it seems cruel that it should 
last only long enough to cease ; it is that he has no light to 
show him life and immortality beyond the grave. It is of 
mystery that he complains, — of mystery which, unexplained, 
makes God seem cruel or capricious." 

50. The ships of reed, — presumably such as he, or the au- 
thor of the book, may have seen in Egypt, light and swift. 
But the word is uncertain, being found only here. 

55, 56. Job has in mind, doubtless, Eliphaz's theory, which 
may have been his own formerly, of man's innate and neces- 
sary corruptness ; see section iii. 33-43- He has not learned 
to question this yet ; though the mystery presses hard upon 
him here, that he should in his own consciousness be inno- 
cent, yet be held guilty. 

60. It comes to the idea of arbitrary power : God is so 
great that He can compel Job to be what He holds him to 
be. A bitter extremity of logic, that God, who has all the 
power, simply works His own inscrutable will, and man has 
neither knowledge nor resource. 



1 88 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

So that my garments would abhor me. 

For He is not a man, like me, that I should 
answer Him, 
That we should come together in judgment ; 
Nor is there any Daysman between us, 
Who might lay his hand on both of us, 65 

Who might remove His rod from upon me, 
That the dread of Him should not unman me. 
Then would I speak, and would not fear Him ; 
For as I am now, I am not myself. 

Chap. ix. 31-35. 

62. He is not a man, like me ; — this characteristic of God, 
removing Him from all human standards and conceptions, 
and making justice and mercy as between God and man 
mere empty names, is the ultimate root of Job's problem. 
His deeply felt need, which his unexplained punishment 
makes palpable, is that God should be like man, — that there 
should be some common ground of understanding between 
them. Thus his outreach from the depths is Messianic. 

64. Nor is there any Daysman, — only a negative assertion 
this, but noteworthy as suggesting what would solve his prob- 
lem if only it were true, and especially noteworthy as origi- 
nating with the human, with Job. And though only negative, 
yet it is to him such a fascinating idea that he broods upon 
it, and turns it over in his mind, and finally comes to believe 
and assert it ; see sections x. 43-48 ; xii. 50-56 ; and Intro- 
ductory Study, p. 54. 

66, 67. With these two lines compare section viii. 91-94. 
These are the two immediate things that Job deoires to have 
done, and he images the Daysman as the ideal agency to do 
them. 

69. Of this line I take the view of Dr. Tayler Lewis, and 
translate somewhat freely, in order to make the expression 



VI. JOB 189 



TO 



IV. 

" My soul is weary of my life ; 
I will let loose my plaint over myself ; 
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 
I will say unto God, Hold me not guilty ; 
Make me know wherefore Thou contendest 
with me. 

Chap. x. 1, 2. 

plain in English. " The word imadi (with myself) denotes 
something nearer, more familiar, than im (another word for 
with) would hav^done; . . . lo ken tmaai, not so with me, 
would seem to give us the idea of de-rangement or being not 
one's self — out of himself ." 

70 sqq. The stormy passages of the book, and especially 
those passages in which a special reach of faith and insight 
is attained, are followed by passages of more calm charac- 
ter, in which the comfort of the suggestion infuses itself into 
his further thought and comes to be taken for granted. This 
is true whether the suggestion is negative, or conjectural, or 
positive ; for indeed Job's reaches of faith pass through all 
these stages before they are thoroughly wrought out into ex- 
pression. In this section the stormy passage that defines the 
chaos of the moral world is followed by the suggestion of the 
Daysman, which would solve the problem from Job's point 
of view. This idea, negative though it is, calms him. The 
succeeding verses in this calmer mood do not take the Days- 
man for granted indeed, but attempt in the absence of a 
Daysman to present the remonstrance directly to God. 

71. / will let loose my plaint ; — as if it were a flood, to be 
let gush forth with risk of devastation and drowning. With 
these lines compare section iv. 83-85, and note there. The 
coming passage, lines 75-107, wherein Job so boldly arraigns 



190 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

Is it beseeming to Thee that Thou shouldst 
oppress, 75 

That Thou shouldst despise the labor of Thy 
hands, 

Whilst Thou shinest on the counsel of the 
wicked ? 

Do eyes of flesh belong to Thee ? 

Or seest Thou as a mortal seeth ? 

Are Thy days like a mortal's days, so 

Or Thy years like the days of a man, 

Chap. x. 3-5. 

God to His face, we may call, in Carlyle's phrase, Job's Ever- 
lasting No ; see Introductory Study, p. 45, and footnote. 

75. Is it besee?ni7ig i — that is, worthy of God as God. At 
the outset of his misery Job would not " attribute aught un- 
beseeming to God" (section i. 87). Neither does he here; 
he does rather what is more honest and open, goes straight 
to God with his difficulty and seeks explanation by some prin- 
ciple that he can understand. It is like Abraham's question, 
Genesis xviiC 25: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
right?" 

That Thou shouldst oppress ; — notice that Job uses the 
word presupposing his innocence ; not punish, as if he were 
guilty. 

76. The creature reading the Creator a lesson. Job is giv- 
ing deep expression to his own creative consciousness ; and 
such consciousness demands love in the world. 

" Who trusted God was love indeed, 
And love creation's final law." 

This is enlarged upon, in Job's peculiar meditative way, lines 
86-95 below. 

78-83. To search narrowly after hidden sin, as if it were a 



VI. JOB I9I 

That Thou searchest after mine iniquity, 

And makest inquisition for my sin ? 

Though Thou knowest that I am not guilty, 

And there is no deliverer out of Thy hand. 85 
Thy hands have fashioned me and finished 
me, 

Together, all round; — yet Thou wouldst de- 
stroy me ! 

Remember now that Thou hast moulded me 
as in clay ; 

And wilt Thou turn me unto dust again ? 

Didst Thou not pour me out like milk, 90 

And curdle me like cheese, — 

Clothe me with skin and flesh, 

And with bones and sinews weave me to- 
gether ? 

Life and favor hast Thou granted unto me, 94 

And Thy providence hath preserved my spirit. 

Chap. x. 6-12. 

matter of uncertainty, is like man, not like God ; it is not 
calmly wise, it is not consistent with omniscience or omnipo- 
tence. For omniscience should know Job's integrity without 
such elaborate inquisition ; and omnipotence can crush with- 
out giving account to any one. 

86-95. The vividness with which God's process of creation 
is conceived and portrayed is an indication of the keenness 
with which Job realizes the awful inconsistency that confronts 
him. The wantonness of the destruction heightens his sense 
of the wonderfulness of creation. 



192 " THE BOOK OF JOB . VI. 

And yet in Thy heart Thou hast hid these 

things, 
I know that this was in Thy mind : 
If I sin, Thou takest account of me, 
Nor wilt Thou absolve me from mine iniquity. 
If I am wicked, woe unto me ! 100 

And if righteous, yet may I not lift up my 

head, — 
Filled as I am with shame, and seeing my 

misery, — 
And should it lift itself, like a lion wouldst 

Thou hunt me, 
And show anew Thy wonders upon me. 
Thou renewest Thy witnesses against me, 105 
And Thou multipliest Thy displeasure toward 

me, 
With changing host on host opposing me. 

Chap. x. 13-17. 

97. This was in Thy mind, — namely, what follows, that 
God should hunt out every sin and pursue it relentlessly. 
This, then, is what creation and preservation mean ! Just 
about what the friends' doctrine involves, only reduced to a 
somewhat sharper antithesis, and viewed from Job's standing- 
point. There is a bitter irony in this passage. Although 
Job says *■ I know," yet we cannot read these words as his 
real and settled conviction ; he cannot rest in it any time at 
all. It is merely the awful reductio ad absurdum to which 
the friends' views and his own former philosophy lead. 

104-107. At the ends of these lines there is a wealth of 
Hebrew prepositions which can be rendered only approxi- 
mately in idiomatic English. 

107. Literally, changes and a host. Job's most frequently 
recurring image to describe his afflictions ; see section iv. 8. 



VI. JOB 193 

V. 

"Wherefore then didst Thou bring me forth 

from the womb ? 
I might have breathed my last, and eye had 

not seen me ; 
As though I had never been might I be, — no 
Carried forth from the belly to the tomb. 

Are not my days few ? 
Let Him cease then ; let Him leave me alone, 
That I may be cheerful a little while, 
Before I go hence, and return not, us 

To the land of darkness and shadow of death, 
A land of blackness, like midnight, 

Chap. x. 18-22. 

108. Wherefore then ? Job's question of section ii. 23, 41 
repeated, with the added significance imparted to it by all the 
steps and involvements through which his thought has passed. 
After all that the friends have urged, after all the aspects in 
which the case may be viewed, it remains true that there is 
no satisfactory solution of life. This may be regarded as the 
summing-up of the present section, comprising the dreary 
outcome of the friends' philosophy. 

112 sqq. Compare section iv. 75-95. 

116. To the land of darkness. By the side of his present 
misery the darkest aspect of death makes a picture on which 
Job's imagination dwells fondly. Of course he is using 
merely the language of phenomena, a language not conclu- 
sive for or against a belief in immortality. To such language 
he holds himself strictly ; nor will he commit himself to a 
solution beyond, except as a rational faith can accept it. 



194 THE BOOK OF JOB VI. 

Of the shadow of death, and without order, 
And where the shining is like midnight." 

Chap. x. 22. 

119. It is the superlative of darkness when even the shin- 
ing — what light there supposably is — is like midnight. 



VII 

ZOPHAR 

Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and 
said : 

" Shall a throng of words go unanswered, 
And a man of lips be counted in the right ? 
Shall thy babblings put men to silence, 
That thou mayest mock, with none to shame 
thee, 5 

And say, My doctrine is pure, 
And clean am I in Thy sight ? 

Chap. xi. 1-4. 

Zophar's indignation rises still higher than that of the oth- 
ers ; being a narrower man, his views are correspondingly 
more intense and dogmatic. With no pretense of courtesy, 
he characterizes Job as a " man of lips," whose words are 
mere babbling and mocking. 

Line 4. The word men means men of full growth, mature 
men ; and there seems to be an implication in the word bab- 
blings that Job is childish. Perhaps the fact that Job's words 
reach no resting-point, but remain gyrating in uncertainty, is 
what makes them seem so barren and childish. The com- 
placency of a cut-and-dried theory ! 

7. Clean am /, — this is the sticking-point with the friends. 
Job's words seem presumptuous insistence on what all ortho- 



I96 THE BOOK OF JOB VII. 

But oh, that God would indeed speak, 

And open His lips against thee, 

And show thee the hidden things of wis- 
dom, — 10 

For there is fold on fold to truth, — 

Then know thou, that God abateth to thee, of 
thine iniquity. 

Chap. xi. 5, 6. 

dox thinking has disclaimed. That no mortal can be clean 
in God's sight is perhaps the most unquestionable article of 
their philosophy; see sections iii. 33-37; ix. 26-31; xvii. 
6-1 1. And Zophar is just the man to be bitter and bigoted 
over it. 

8. Would indeed speak, — probably an allusion to what Job 
says, section vi. 4-7, 26-33 > an< ^ t0 Job's general demand 
for explanation of his misery. 

11. For there is fold on fold to truth, — literally, truth is 
tzuofold. The word translated truth is elsewhere translated 
reality ; see note, section iii. 69. This theory of a twofold 
and mystical sense in truth is a significant indication of the 
refinement that the Hebrew Wisdom had reached by feeding 
on its speculations. 

12. God abateth to thee, — that is, even in this punishment 
does not take account of all the evil Job has done. To say 
this is not personal spite ; it is merely the extreme to which 
the theory of man's necessary depravity, unchecked by sober 
sense, may lead, — an extreme that requires a twofold inter- 
pretation of things to .substantiate. 

Observe how the friends have gathered heat as they pro- 
ceeded. Eliphaz was courteous and indirect, exhorting 
merely to repentance ; Bildad spoke of the sons' calamity as 
just ; Zophar finds Job's punishment less than his desert. 



VII. ZOPHAR I97 

I. 

"Canst thou find out the secret of God ? 

Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfec- 
tion ? 

Heights of heaven, — what canst thou do ? 15 

Deeper than Sheol, — what canst thou know? 

Longer than the earth its measure, 

And broader than the sea. 

If He pass by, and apprehend, and call to judg- 
ment, 

Who then shall prevent Him ? 20 

For He, He knoweth false men ; 

And He seeth wickedness, though He seemeth 
not to heed. 

But the witless will never become wise, 

Till the wild-ass' foal be born a man. 

Chap. xi. 7-12. 

13-18. Nothing can be more beautiful or true than these 
words, abstractly considered ; and it is only Zophar's point 
of view that makes them convict Job of presumption. Job 
has been trying to find merely what concerns him as a re- 
sponsible being, something that he feels he has a right to 
know if he is judged on grounds of mere justice ; but Zophar 
identifies this with presumptuous curiosity about God's hid- 
den ways. 

21, 22. Zophar and the others have an intellectual delight 
in God's inscrutableness ; as they are not hurt by it, they like 
to note the sudden stroke that overtakes the sinner. Suffer- 
ing has changed all that in Job; see section iv. 62, and note. 

22, 24. Literally, the witless will become wise when {and) 



198 THE BOOK OF JOB VII. 

II. 

" But thou, if thou wilt direct thy heart, 25 

And spread forth thy hands unto Him, — 
If iniquity be in thy hand, put it far away, 
And let not perverseness dwell in thy tents, — 
Then surely shalt thou lift up thy face without 

spot, 
And thou shalt be steadfast and not fear. 30 
For thou shalt forget misery, 
Shalt remember it as waters that have passed 

away ; 
And brighter than noonday shall the future 

arise ; 
And be it never so dark, it shall be as the 

morning. 

Chap. xi. 13-17. 

the wild-ass* foal will be born a man, — that is, never ; pre- 
sumably a proverb. Does not the use of this proverb indi- 
cate that Wisdom culture was becoming intolerant, — as the 
Pharisees came afterward to say, " This people that knoweth 
not the law are cursed " ? 

25. The same call to repentance that Eliphaz (section iii. 
60 sqq.) and Bildad (section v. 8-14) have given. It is in 
more courteous tone than the foregoing lines ; but its animus 
is still evident, in the fact that it traverses Job's presupposi- 
tion entirely and exhorts to what Job can do only as a con- 
fessed sinner. 

27, 28. Zophar puts in the same kind of saving clause that 
Bildad has done (section v. 10), but not quite so delicately. 



VII. ZOPHAR I99 

And thou shalt be confident because there is 
hope, 35 

And shalt look around thee and lie down se- 
curely. 

Thou shalt lie down and none shall make thee 
afraid ; 

And great ones shall pay court unto thee. 

But the eyes of the wicked shall waste away, 

And refuge vanish eth from them ; 40 

And their hope is — to breathe forth their life/' 

Chap. xi. 18-20. 

39. A tag about the wicked, to give a bite to the end of 
his speech. 

41. Their hope is, etc., — a contrast to what he has just 
said (1. 35) about the repentant righteous man, and possibly 
a little hint against Job's rash desire to die. The paradox of 
the expression is like Bildad's " This is the joy of his way," 
section v. 37, and is probably one of the aphoristic crystalli- 
zations of the Wisdom philosophy. 



VIII 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" Of a truth, ye are the people, 

And wisdom will die with you ! 

I also have understanding, as well as you ; 

I am not inferior to you ; 5 

And who knoweth not things like these ? 

Chap. xii. 1-3. 

Hitherto Job's attitude toward his friends has been that 
of unquestioning assent. Agreeing with all their assertions, 
he has endeavored, but wholly without result, to make their 
philosophy explain these perplexing facts. Now that all 
three have spoken, however, and revealed their uniform 
drift, the barrenness of their generalizations flashes upon 
him, and he sees that they have not touched the difficulties 
of the case at all. They have urged no more than he has 
always known. From this point his attitude toward them 
changes. They no longer stand to him as representatives 
of wisdom ; and this section, ceasing to arraign God, ar- 
raigns the friends instead. 

Line 6. The friends' words are the veriest commonplace; 
strangely insipid as they seemed from the first — see section 
iv. n, note — they have become but more evidently so as 
they multiplied. 



VIII. JOB 20I 

A laughing-stock to his friend — such must I 

be, — 
I who call upon God, and whom He answer- 

eth, — 
A laughing-stock I, the just, the upright. 
For woe there is contempt in the thought of 

the secure ; 10 

It awaiteth them whose feet stumble. 
The tents of spoilers are at peace ; 
And there is full security to them that provoke 

God, 
To him that carrieth his God in his hand. 



" Nay, ask now the beasts, and they will teach 
thee, 15 

Chap. xii. 4-7. 

7. A laughing-stock, — because his perplexities are ignored 
and contemned, while his fundamental righteousness is coolly 
denied. 

10. The friends are secure ; they do not look at suffering 
through sufferers' eyes ; they can contemn a woe that they 
do not feel. 

12-15. These lines are the logical sequence of the previous. 
Those who live in high-handed wickedness, whose spear or 
sword is all the God and deliverer they desire, have the same 
unfeeling security ; like the friends, they have the arrogance 
of the upper hand. This consideration carries on the thought 
first broached in section vi. 45, advancing it one step toward 
that view of the wicked and their ways which Job carries out 
in sections xiv. 12-67 j XY1 - 34~9 X - 

15 sqq. In these lines, as far as 1. 56, Job takes up and iter- 



202 THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

And the bird of the heaven, and it will tell 

thee ; 
Or direct thy thought to the earth, and it will 

teach thee, 
And the fishes of the sea will recount unto 

thee. 
Who knoweth not, by all these, 
That the hand of Jehovah worketh thus ? 20 
In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, 
And the spirit of all human flesh. 

Doth not the ear try words, 
As the palate tasteth meat for itself ? 
Doth wisdom dwell with hoary heads, 25 

And is length of days understanding ? 
With Him are wisdom and might ; 

Chap. xii. 7-13. 

ates what is true in the views of the friends, at the same time 
broadening its application. Everything, both good and evil, 
is in God's hands ; no Eliphaz's vision, or Bildad's traditional 
wisdom, or Zophar's occult philosophy, is needed to prove 
that ; the commonest things teach it. 

20. The hand of Jehovah , — this is the only place in the 
poem, aside from the Prologue and the Epilogue, where the 
name Jehovah occurs ; see note, section i. 24. Jehovah, the 
God of the Hebrews, is here recognized as the universal God. 

23-26. The wisdom of which the friends think so much is 
not the gift or prerogative of years ; it is revealed to a native 
insight as natural as taste or hearing ; hence Job can trust his 
own conclusions as well as those of the friends. In this con- 
fidence he leaves their philosophy, and sets out for himself. 

27 sqq. In these lines Job gives the results of his observa- 



VIII. JOB 203 

To Him belong counsel and understanding. 
Behold, He teareth down, and it shall not be 

builded ; 
He shutteth up a man, and there shall be no 

opening. 30 

Behold, He restraineth the waters, and they 

dry up ; 
He letteth them forth, and they lay waste the 

earth. 
With Him are strength and truth ; 
The erring one and he that causeth to err are 

His. 
Who leadeth counselors away captive ; 35 

And judges He maketh fools. 

Chap. xii. 13-17. 

tion in nature and history. In the main it is in the same line 
as the friends' philosophy, possibly drawn from the great 
body of Wisdom literature, but differing from it (see especially 
1. 34) in making God's dealings irrespective of human sin and 
desert. So far as the moral character of God herein involved 
is concerned, He might be an irresponsible and arbitrary ty- 
rant, giving no reasons and caring for no justifications. This 
is an important step in advance of the friends' wisdom ; it 
clears the ground, so to say, of their narrow moral considera- 
tions, and forms a clean basis on which to build anew. 

35. So much is said here of captivity, and of removal (see 
H- 35' 39? 48)> an d with such apparent marks of an eye-wit- 
ness (see 1. 53), that we naturally conclude some great na- 
tional upheaval was fresh in memory, the writer putting his 
own memories into the mouth of the patriarch. To me this 
event seems most probably to have been the fall of the 
Northern Kingdom; see Introductory Study, pp. m-114. 



204 THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

The bond of kings He looseth, 

And bindeth a cord upon their loins. 

Who leadeth priests away captive ; 

And the long established He overthroweth. 40 

Who removeth the speech of trusted ones ; 

And the discernment of the aged He taketh 

away. 
Who poureth contempt on princes ; 
And the girdle of the strong Pie looseth. 
Who revealeth deep things out of darkness, 45 
And bringeth forth to light the shadow of 

death. 
Who maketh nations great, — and destroyeth 

them ; 
Who spreadeth nations out, and leadeth them 

away. 
Who dishearteneth the leaders of the people of 

the land, 
And maketh them wander in a waste where 

there is no path. 50 

They grope in darkness without light ; 
And He maketh them wander like a drunken 

man. 
Behold, all this hath mine eye seen ; 
Mine ear hath heard and understood it well. 

Chap. xii. 18 — xin. 1. 

53-56. Job has thus accurately defined how far he and the 
friends are at one ; they agree in ascribing all events to God. 
But from this point their paths diverge. 



VIII. JOB 205 

What ye know, that know I also ; 55 

I am not inferior to you. 



11. 

11 But I, — to the Almighty would I speak ; 

I long to make plea unto God. 

But ye too, — forgers of lies are ye ; 

Patchers-up of nothings are ye all. 60 

Would th^t ye were silent altogether ! 

And it would be to you for wisdom. 

Hear ye now my rebuke, 
And listen to the charges of my lips. 
Will ye speak what is wrong, for God ? 65 

And will ye, for Him, utter deceit ? 

Chap. xiii. 2-j. 

57, 58. Taking Zophar at his word (see section vii. 8) Job 
would invite God's answer by making plea to Him. In the 
absence of a Daysman to represent his cause (section vi. 62- 
69), Job approaches God directly, as indeed he has ap- 
proached Him before (vi. 70-107), but in much better spirit 
now. 

59. Forgers of lies. What the friends have said, true 
though it is, is only the half-truth, which in their application 
of it has all the effect of a lie. Two essential elements they 
have ignored : the fact, illustrated by Job's affliction, that 
man may be punished though righteous ; and the converse, 
taught by obvious facts, that man may be wicked and pros- 
per. Hence their philosophizings are of no worth at all ; see 

n. 75, 76. 

65 sqq. At this sublime point the utter honesty of Job's heart 
comes in conflict with what he must recognize as dishonesty 



206 THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

Will ye respect His person ? 

Or will ye be special pleaders for God ? 

Would it be well, if He should search you 

out? 
Or will ye mock Him, as man mocketh man ? 70 
He will surely convict you utterly, 
If in secret ye are respecters of persons. 
Shall not His majesty make you afraid, 
And the dread of Him fall upon you ? 
Your wise maxims are proverbs of ashes ; 75 
Your bulwarks turn to bulwarks of clay. 

in. 

" Be silent ; let me alone ; and speak will I, 
Let come upon me what will. 
Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, 
And put my life in my hand ? so 

Chap. xiii. 8-14. 

on the part of the friends. In denying facts in order to jus- 
tify God they are simply currying favor with God, respecting 
His person in opposition to candid conviction. 

69-74. Job takes his stand on God's truth ; dark though 
the divine ways are, Job is afraid to be dishonest to convic- 
tion before Him. Thus his philosophy comes home at last 
to personal character. 

75. It was in the maxim or aphoristic form that the utter- 
ances of Hebrew Wisdom were formulated ; this remark of 
Job is in effect the condemnation of their whole philosophy. 

77, 78. This emphatic preface is Job's hint of the impor- 
tance and significance of what he is going to say. He is 
going to make a declaration on which life and death hangs. 



VIII. JOB 207 

Behold — He may slay me ; I may not hope ; 
But my ways will I maintain, to His face. 
Nay, that shall be to me also for salvation, 
For no false one shall come into His presence. 
Hear, oh hear my speech, 85 

And let my declaration sound in your ears. 
Behold, now have I set in order my cause ; 
I know that I shall be justified. 
Who is he that will contend with me ? — 
For then would I be silent and give up my life. 90 

Chap. xiii. 15-19. 

81. A more authentic reading, as well as the homogeneity 
of the context, seems to make it necessary that the much- 
loved text " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him " 
shall yield to the translation here given. 

82. My ways will I maintain. This is not foolhardy pre- 
sumption on Job's part ; from 11. 69-74 it is apparent that he is 
afraid to do otherwise. This declaration we call Job's ever- 
lasting Yea, in which he definitely leaves his friends, who are 
trying to have him forsake his ways and repent, and commits 
the event of his life, as he has hitherto lived it, to God ; see 
Introductory Study, p. 52, footnote. 

83. But at the same time he does this in faith, that only on 
the issue of truth can salvation be found. To maintain the 
ways that he sees to be right will be, must be, his salvation. 

85. Another call to attention, indicating Job's confidence in 
the importance of his declaration. 

87, 88. Job regards himself throughout as a defendant 
bringing a righteous cause to God. 

89, 90. These lines indicate how deeply Job's avowal has 
taken hold of his life. So sure is he of its truth that if it 
were possible for one to make good the opposite, then life 
would have no more significance for him ; his whole being is 
committed to this position of his. 



208 THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

Only these two things do not Thou unto me, — 
Then will I not hide myself from Thy face : 
Remove Thou Thy hand from upon me, 
And let not Thy terror unman me ; 
Then call Thou, and I will answer Thee, 95 

Or I will speak, and return Thou answer to me. 
How many are mine iniquities and my sins ? 
My transgressions and my sins make Thou 

known to me. 
Wherefore hidest Thou- Thy face, 
And countest me for Thine enemy ? 100 

Wilt Thou chase away a driven leaf, 
And pursue after the dry stubble ? 
For Thou writest bitter things against me, 
And makest me inherit the sins of my youth. 
And Thou puttest my feet in the stocks, 105 
And keepest watch on all my paths. 

Chap. xiii. 20-27. 

91. Comparing this passage with section vi. 64-69, we see 
that the two things for which Job asks here are just the 
boons that he associates with a Daysman. Note, then, the 
place of this plea. As soon as Job, committing life and des- 
tiny to his integrity, feels that he has reached a point where 
God and he may stand together, and where, believing that 
God will hear and heed, he may set in order his cause, he 
makes his plea for that which a Daysman would secure. 

97, 99. How many ? and Wherefore ? These are the prob- 
lems that have all along perplexed Job ; but he now urges 
them as part of the cause which he has " set in order." 

103. Writest bitter things y — as it were an indictment, which 
Job has to answer. 



VIII. JOB 209 

On the soles of my feet hast Thou set Thy 

mark ; 
On one who as a rotten thing consumeth away, 
As a garment that is moth-eaten. 

IV. 

" Man, born of woman, 110 

Scant of days, and full of unrest, 
Cometh forth, like a flower, and withereth, 
Fleeth like the shadow, and abideth not. 
Yet on such a one dost Thou open Thine eyes, 
And me bringest Thou into judgment with 
Thee. 115 



Chap. xiii. 27 — xiv. 3. 

107. Hast Thau set Thy mark, — as a driver marks a camel 
so that he can trace it. " The grievance that Job complains 
of, in this case, would be like putting such a mark upon an 
old worn-out camel, which, instead of straying, was unable 
to stand up." — Tayler Lewis. 

no. The thought of his diseased and exhausted condition 
brings anew the thought of death, round which his mind has 
already eddied ; here, however, he begins to work toward a 
solution of the perplexing fact, though, as in the case of the 
Daysman, only negatively at first. 

115. By this skillful transition to the first person Job iden- 
tifies himself with the race, and reveals his consciousness 
that his case is a lesson for all humanity. A similar manner 
of expression is used in Tennyson's In Memoriam, cix. 6 : — 

" All these have been, and thee mine eyes 
Have look'd on." 



2IO THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

Oh that a pure could come from an impure ! 
— Not one ! 

If his days are determined, 
The number of his months with Thee, 
His bounds if Thou hast set, that he may not 
pass them, 120 

Then look away from him, that he may rest, 
Until he shall enjoy, as a hireling, his day. 

For there is yet hope for a tree ; 
If it is cut down, it will shoot up again, 
And its tender sprout will not fail. 125 

Though its root should grow old in the earth, 
And in the dust its trunk should die, 
Yet through the scent of water it sprouteth 
again, 

Chap. xiv. 4-9. 

116, 117. Job's thought, in this ejaculation, seems to be, 
Oh, that all these pains and diseases, all this frailty and suf- 
fering of humanity, might issue in completion rather than in 
corruption ; that they had some result corresponding to their 
severity ; but in the present outlook they seem wholly fruit- 
less of their due. It is this longing that apparently supplies 
the impulse for his further conjectures on death and renewed 
life. 

120. His bounds, — the human soul of Job is too large for 
its dwelling-place ; it beats blindly against its earthly limita- 
tions, longing to pass them. 

122. As a hireling, — a doubtful enjoyment, merely making 
the best of a hard matter ; see section iv. 62-67. 

123. An analogy occurs to Job, which is full of suggestion 
for better things and rouses great thoughts of what ought 
to be. 



VIII. JOB 211 

And putteth forth boughs like a young plant. 
But man dieth, and is fallen prostrate ; iso 

But man gaspeth out his breath, — and where 

is he ? 
Waters fail from the sea, 
And the river wasteth and drieth up : 
So man lieth down, and riseth not ; 
Till the heavens be no more they will not 

awake, 135 

Nor be roused out of their sleep. 

Oh that Thou wouldst hide me in the grave, 
Wouldst keep me secret until Thy wrath is 

past, 
Wouldst set me a time, and remember me ! 
If a man die — might he live again ? 140 

Chap. xiv. 9-14. 

130-133. Yet Job sternly represses the application of the 
figure, and makes it yield to the counter-analogy of the fail- 
ing waters. Throughout this passage, to the end of the sec- 
tion, there is a conflict between intellect and imagination, 
reason and fancy, the seen and the longed-for. And alto- 
gether we have here such a picture of faith struggling to get 
free from the inexorable suggestions of this phenomenal life 
and find a free standing-point in the unseen beyond, as can 
hardly be paralleled elsewhere in literature. 

137. This longing, which surges up unsubdued by the pre- 
vious analogy, seems to be suggested by the last clause about 
sleep. " If sleep and death be truly one," — then, there may 
be a waking ! For a parallel passage, read Tennyson's In 
Memoriam, xliii. 

140. Might he li7>e again? The whole context indicates 
that Job asks this question with the thought — provisionally, 



212 THE BOOK OF JOB VIII. 

All the days of my service would I wait, 
Until my renewal came ; 
Thou wouldst call, and I would answer ; 
Thou wouldst yearn after the work of Thy 

hands ! 
For then wouldst Thou number my steps, 145 
Nor wouldst Thou watch upon my sin ; 
Sealed up in a bag would my transgression be, 
And Thou wouldst sew up mine iniquity. 

Chap. xiv. 14-17. 

of course — of the affirmative answer in mind. Hence the 
translation " might he live." The translation " shall he live " 
would be the oratorical interrogation suggesting a negative 
answer, which would be quite out of place here. It is this 
affirmative answer which Job uses as an implied basis for the 
succeeding lines, 141-148. 

141. My service ', — the same war-fare, or war-service, which 
Job attributes to himself, as representative of humanity, in 
section iv. 62. 

142. My reneival, — Job uses this word apparently in remi- 
niscence of his analogy of the tree, 1. 124, where the word 
" will shoot up " has the same Hebrew root. If man should 
live again, then he would be renewed like the tree, and could 
wait in hope. 

144. How persistently Job presupposes in God a love like 
that of a father ! — see section vi. 75, 76; 86, 87. In this re- 
spect he is in contrast to the hard theology of his friends ; 
and it is on this line of affection — Creator for creature, 
friend for friend, an affection which in his relations here on 
earth has failed — that he reaches his greatest achievements 
in faith. 

145-148. A contrast to God's present treatment of him ; 
see 11. 103-109. If Job were to live again, his steps would be 



VIII. JOB 213 



"And yet — the mountain falling crumbleth 

away, 
And the rock removeth out of its place. 150 

Water weareth down the stones ; 
Its floods sweep away the dust of the earth ; 
And the hope of mortal man Thou makest 

perish. 
Thou overpowerest him for ever, and he pass- 

eth ; 
Thou changest his countenance, and sendest 

him away. 155 

His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it 

not ; 
They are brought to shame, and he doth not 

regard it. 
Only his flesh upon him suffereth pain ; 
And his soul within him mourneth." 

Chap. xiv. 18-22. 

all numbered, his account made up and sealed, ready for the 
final award. 

" So that still garden of the souls 
In many a figured leaf enrolls 
The total world since life began." 

149. And yet) — Job is not quite ready to commit himself to 
the fancy that he has indulged ; he makes his way cautiously, 
inductively. The mountains, the most permanent objects 
that we see, gradually crumble down to dust. Job cannot 
ignore this analogy ; and so for the time he seems to be 
left where he began ; but his thought is only germinating, and 
when we meet it again it will have grown perceptibly. 



IX 

ELIPHAZ 

And Eliphazthe Temanite answered, and said : 

" Shall a wise man answer windy knowledge, 
And fill his belly with the east wind, — 
Reasoning with a word that availeth not, 
And with speeches wherein is no profit ? 5 

Nay, and thou bringest piety to nought, 
And lessenest devotion before God ; 
For thine iniquity teacheth thy mouth, 

Chap. xv. 1-5. 

Line 2. A wise man. Eliphaz, who comes from Tern an, 
a place famed for its wisdom, evidently prides himself on be- 
longing to the guild of wise men ; which guild he regards 
Job, hitherto an eminent member thereof, as dishonoring by 
his strange ideas, which to Eliphaz are "windy knowledge. ,, 

6. To the friends' conception of God, which demands a 
hushed, subdued, unreasoning worship, Job has been very 
irreverent, not to say rebellious. They cannot reconcile his 
wild remonstrances with piety. 

8. Thine iniquity. Eliphaz can attribute Job's bold words 
only to high-handed defiance of God ; there is no room in his 
system for honest doubt and inquiry. Even Job's assump- 
tion of honesty, as would seem from the next line, looks to 
him like craft. 



IX. ELIPHAZ 215 

And thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. 
Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I ; 
And thy lips testify against thee. u 

1. 

" Wast thou born the first man ? 

And wast thou brought forth before the hills ? 

Didst thou listen in the council of God ? 

And didst thou draw wisdom to thyself ? 15 

What knowest thou that we know not ? 

What understandest thou, and the same is not 

in us ? 
Yea, the grey-haired, yea, the aged man, is 

amongst us, 
Fuller of days than thy father. 

Are the consolations of God too small for 

thee, 20 

And a word spoken unto thee kindly ? 

Chap. xv. 5-11. 

16. Job's ideas so strike out from the beaten path that he 
talks like one with a new source of knowledge. His assertion 
that he knows all that they have told him (section viii. 6, 55), 
and his contempt of their philosophy, is galling to Eliphaz. 

18. The aged man, — not only the old men who are actu- 
ally alive, but those who live still in their w r ords of wisdom ; 
see next clause, and section v. 15 sq., as well as this present 
section, 11. 32-35. 

20. Consolations of God, — such is the name that Eliphaz 
gives to his admonitions, a name that evidently rankles in 
Job's mind ; see section xiv. 3. 



2l6 THE BOOK OF JOB IX. 

Why hath thy heart carried thee away, 
And why quiver thine eyes, — 
That thou turnest thy spirit against God, 
And lettest forth such words out of thy mouth ? 
What is mortal man, that he should be clean, 26 
And that the woman - born should be right- 
eous ? 
Behold, in His holy ones He putteth no trust, 
And the heavens are not clean in His eyes ; 29 
How much less the abominable and corrupt, — 
Man, that drinketh in perverseness as water ! 

11. 

" I will show thee ; listen thou to me ; 
And that which I have seen will I declare ; 
Which wise men tell, and have not hidden, — 
Things heard from their fathers, 35 

Chap. xv. 12-18. 

24. Job has turned his spirit against the friends* concep- 
tion of God, a Being without affection, and dealing only ac- 
cording to iron justice. 

26-31. Eliphaz here repeats, with some tendency to inten- 
sification, what his vision revealed to him, section iii. 33-39. 
It is the Old Testament doctrine of total depravity ; and how 
far the wise men's speculations had emphasized it is apparent 
from 11. 30, 31. 

34-37. These lines indicate that the guild of Wise Men, of 
whom we first hear in connection with Solomon, was already 
ancient enough to have established a philosophy which was 
an implicit oracle. The Wisdom had become an orthodoxy, 
priding itself on its antiquity, and on the fact that no inter- 



IX. ELIPHAZ 217 

Unto whom alone the land was given, 

And no stranger hath passed among them : — 

' All his days the wicked is in torment, 
And the number of his years reserved to the 

oppressor. 
A voice of terrors is in his ears ; 40 

In peace the spoiler cometh upon him. 
He hath no hope of returning out of darkness, 
And he is marked out for the sword. 
He wandereth about for bread — where is it ? 
He knoweth that just at hand is a day of 

darkness, 45 

Trouble and anguish make him afraid, — 
Overcome him, as a king ready for onset. 

Chap. xv. 19-24. 

mixture of strange doctrine had ever been permitted. An 
international philosophy, too ; for Eliphaz is of Teman, and 
none of his auditors are represented as of Palestine. All 
this is proof of the ripened age of the Hebrew Wisdom at 
the time when the Book of Job was written. 

38. Here begin the words of the fathers. Eliphaz brings 
up this lurid picture of the wicked in order to counteract 
Job's intimations that the wicked are prospered while the 
righteous suffer. Such intimations, in direct contradiction to 
the conclusions of wisdom, seem to open the door to all kinds 
of violence and infidelity ; it lets down the barriers of doubt 
and admits indefinable riotings of extravagant doctrine. So 
Eliphaz, who gives the tone to the others, desires to put him- 
self strongly on record for God ; hence this purely theoretical 
picture of the wicked, drawn not for truth, but for theological 
consistency, and erring grossly by exaggeration ; see, for in- 
stance, 11. 57, 58, which Job will show to be palpably untrue. 



2l8 THE BOOK OF JOB IX. 

Because he stretcheth out his hand against 

God, 
And against the Almighty maketh himself 

strong, — 
Runneth against Him with hardened neck, 50 
With the thick bosses of his bucklers ; — 
Because he covereth his face with his fat, 
And gathereth suet upon his loins, 
And dwelleth in desolated cities, 
In houses that no man would inhabit, 55 

Which are doomed to be heaps of stones ; — 
Therefore he shall not be rich, nor shall his 

substance endure ; 
Neither shall their possessions spread out in 

the earth. 
He shall not escape out of darkness ; 

Chap. xv. 25-30. 

48. This line is perhaps a covert warning to Job who 
seems dangerously near doing the same thing. The second 
clause, or apodosis, of the sentence begins at 1. 57. 

50. With hardened neck, — like a bull, which rushes blindly 
against whatever rouses its wrath. 

52. His prosperity makes him obtuse and unspiritual ; in- 
different to divine things. Eliphaz has exalted ideas of spir- 
itual insight and keenness ; compare sections iii. 44-47 ; xv. 
18-21. 

54. Desolated cities, — perhaps cities that he himself, as 
conqueror or as heartless rich man, has desolated in order to 
make them his own residence ; or it may be cities that, as 
dwelling-places of the cursed and godless, are viewed in anti- 
cipation as desolated ; compare section iii. 49, " I cursed his 
habitation." 



IX. ELIPHAZ 219 

A flame shall dry up his tender shoots, eo 

And by the breath of His mouth shall he pass 
away. 
Let him not trust in vanity ; he is deceived ; 

For vanity shall be his recompense. 

While yet his time is not, it shall be paid in 
full; 

And his palm-branch is no longer green. 65 

He shall cast off, like a vine, his unripe grapes ; 

And shall scatter his blossoms, like the olive. 

For the company of the profane is barren, 

And fire devoureth the tents of bribery. 

They conceive mischief, and bring forth ini- 
quity, 70 

And their womb matureth deceit.' " 

Chap. xv. 30-35. 

61. Compare Eliphaz's earlier words, section Hi. 16. 

62-67. As Eliphaz has apparently no conception of a fu- 
ture state of retribution, his words seem to assert that the 
wicked will have their fearful recompense in this life ; Prov- 
erbs xi. 31 may be taken as the key to his and the friends' 
philosophy ; a position that Job, when the time comes, will 
controvert with vigor. 

In the above speech of Eliphaz it seems to be the writer's 
intention to make him overstate his doctrine and make it ob- 
viously untrue to fact ; see Introductory Study, p. 6^. 



X 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" I have heard many things like these ! 
Tormenting comforters are ye all. 
Is there any end to words of wind ? 
Or what hath provoked thee, that thou an- 
swerest thus ? 5 

I also could speak as ye do, 
Were your soul in my soul's stead ; 
I could compose words against you ; 

Chap. xvi. 1-4. 

Line 3. EHphaz has just blamed Job (section ix. 20) for 
despising the " consolations of God." Job retorts that the 
friends are administering just the reverse of consolation ; 
they are tormenting comforters. 

5. Job seems to recognize in Eliphaz's answer a heat and 
violence of assertion so much beyond the demands of the 
subject that it has the look of personal vindictiveness. He 
cannot understand how such honest doubt as his own should 
rouse such odium theolcgicum. 

8. Compose words, — this expression contains a double sar- 
casm. It implies that their minds are so calm, so untouched 
by deep affliction, that they can have leisure to put together 
pleasing and faultless rhetoric. At the same time it implies 



X JOB 221 

And I could shake my head over you ; 

I could strengthen you — with my mouth, 10 

And my lip-sympathy could sustain you. 



" If I speak, my anguish is not assuaged ; 
And if I forbear^ what am I eased ? 
Nay — now hath He wearied me out ; 
Thou hast desolated all my household, is 



Chap. xvi. 4-7. 

that their rhetoric is unreal, unfaithful to fact, being merely 
words, intellectual performance, not the outflow of the heart. 

9. Job is not slow to recognize what their general pictures 
of the fate of the wicked mean ; they are shaking their head 
over him. * 

12. Leaving here what Eliphaz has said, Job returns to his 
own line of thinking, which he laid down at the end of sec- 
tion viii. with the unsolved problem of death. It is the 
thought of his suffering that he now takes up, and especially 
with reference to the author of it. 

14. The notable thing of this whole passage is that Job 
hardly knows how to identify the author of his misery. He 
speaks here of " He," without naming God ; in the next 
breath he turns directly to God and says "Thou" (1. 15); 
again it is " His anger " (1. 19), as if Job were reluctant to 
tax God directly with it; then it is "mine enemy" (1. 21), as 
if it were some fell power whom he dared not name. Anon 
it is " they" (1. 22), as if it were an army of foes, or as if his 
friends were combined with the unseen powers. Clearly Job 
is hesitating to ascribe to God such hatred as he must recog- 
nize in his punishment ; he is groping after the God of love, 
and unwittingly drawing near to Him. 



222 THE BOOK OF JOB X. 

And Thou hast shriveled me up, till it is be- 
come a witness ; 

Yea, my leanness riseth up against me ; 

It beareth witness to my face. 

His anger teareth and hateth me ; 

He gnasheth upon me with his teeth ; 20 

Mine enemy whetteth his eyes against me. 

They gape upon me with thei* mouth ; 

With scorn they smite me on the cheek ; 

As one man they combine themselves against 
me. 

God delivereth me to the perverse, 25 

And into the hands of wicked ones He casteth 
me headlong. 

Chap. xvi. 8-1 i. 

16, 17. Extreme emaciation is one accompaniment of ele- 
phantiasis. 

19. An exaggerated picture this, charged with the bitter- 
ness of long anguish. The hatred that is portrayed in it is 
its estranging feature ; such hatred is so opposite to Job's 
conception of the Godlike (compare sections vi. 75, 76; 
86-89; viii. 144) that he is wholly bewildered by it. 

22. Who are " they ? " Certainly not the friends. I think 
the word is Job's undefined term for the powers of evil ; per- 
haps he uses the plural as typical of the manifold wickedness 
that opposes the good. 

25, 26. The perverse, wicked ones, seem to be left unde- 
fined, whether men or unseen powers. Or perhaps it may 
also mean that this punishment, being due to the wicked, 
identifies him with them, compels him to be counted in their 
company. 



X. JOB 223 

I was at ease, — and He hath shattered me, 
Yea, hath seized me by the neck and dashed 

me down ; 
And He hath set me up for His mark. 
His arrows beset me round about ; 30 

He cleaveth asunder my reins, and spareth not ; 
He poureth out my gall upon the earth ; 
He breaketh me through, breach on breach ; 
He runneth upon me as a mighty man of war. 
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, 35 

And have thrust my horn into the dust. 
My face is burning red from weeping, 
And on mine eyelids is the shadow of death ; 
Yet not for any violence in my hands ; 
And my prayer too is pure. 40 

Chap. xvi. 12-17. 

27 sqq. Job describes his suffering in such strong terms 
that it is most natural to take it as typical, and Job himself 
as a type of the suffering righteous. There is veritable Mes- 
sianic language here (see especially 11. 20-26), such as we 
find in Second Isaiah, though not yet so idealized into the 
suffering Servant of Jehovah. See Introductory Study, p. 
117. 

29. The same image that is employed in section iv. 103. 

30-34. Job habitually uses this image of war and siege to 
describe God's treatment of him ; see sections iv. 8; vi. 107; 
xii. 22-24. 

40. A profound yet very practical test this of one's integrity 
before God. One is reminded of Coleridge's Ancient Mari- 
ner, who relates that as soon as he could look on God's crea- 
tures with love instead of hatred, "that self-same moment I 
could pray." 



224 THE BOOK OF JOB X. 



II. 

" Earth, cover not thou my blood, 
And let my cry have no resting-place ! 
Even now, behold, in heaven is my witness, 
And mine advocate is on high. 
My friends are my scorners, 45 

But unto God mine eye poureth tears, 
That he would plead for man with God, 
And as the son of man for his neighbor. 

For a few years will pass, 
And I shall go the way whence I shall not 
return. 50 

Chap. xvr. 18-22. 

42. The old idea, expressed in the Cain incident (Genesis 
iv. 10), that a murdered man's blood cries out for vengeance. 
Of course this puts in the strongest terms Job's sense of in- 
justice. 

43. Yet in the next breath Job turns for vindication to the 
very quarter whence he has supposed the injustice comes. In 
his thought he seems to divide the God who oppresses him 
from a God who loves him and represents his cause ; at least 
he commits himself by a mighty reach of faith to an Advo- 
cate on high, though he does not clearly identify such an. 
Advocate fully with God. 

47. Job evidently thinks of the Advocate as the Daysman 
whom he so longed for (section vi. 62-69) ; and we see the 
advance he has made in faith by the fact that the being 
whose existence he despairingly denied then he now acknow- 
ledges with passionate assertion. 

48. It is Job's hunger for love, his longing for friendship, 
that works especially to drive him to the Advocate ; see 1. 45. 

50. Yet here his idea of the Advocate stops ; it must take 



X. JOB 22 5 

My breath is spent ; my days are quenched ; 
For me are left only the graves. 
Were it not that mockery is with me, 
Mine eye could rest calmly on their taunts. 



in. 

" Give now the pledge ; be Thou surety for me 
with Thyself ; — 55 

Who is he that striketh hands with me ? 

For their heart hast Thou hid from understand- 
ing ; 

Therefore wilt Thou not exalt them. 

Chap. xvii. 1-4. 

another surge of faith before he connects his immortality 
therewith. 

52. The graves, — a curious plural. Perhaps the word was 
used to designate the cemetery, the place of graves. 

53, 54. Job's thought of the Advocate has so calmed his 
mind in the contemplation of death that he speaks as if con- 
tent to go, — see, also, 11. 72-83; the only drawback to his 
calmness is that he has " mockery " to meet and set right. 
His friends are saying things that demand answer ; Job refers 
doubtless to their intemperate assertions about the wicked, 
which he will soon address himself to refute. 

55, 56. Full of the idea of an Advocate, Job turns sponta- 
neously to God as if to make a covenant ; then he seems to 
pause, as if uncertain whether to identify the Advocate with 
God or not. 

57. The insight that Job's faith has given him makes him 
see also that the friends are spiritually blind ; he has mis- 
trusted this before (see section viii. 2, 3) ; now he knows it. 
From this point on he is their open antagonist. 



226 THE BOOK OF JOB X. 

' He betrayeth friends for a prey, 
And the eyes of his children fail.' 60 

And He hath made me a by-word of peoples ; 
And I am become as one to be spit upon in 

the face. 
Dim too, from sorrow, is mine eye, 
And my members are as a shadow, all of them. 
For this shall the upright be amazed, 65 

And the pure shall be roused to anger against 

the profane ; 
But the righteous shall hold on his way, 
And the clean of hands shall wax stronger and 

stronger. 
But you — all of you — return ye ! and come 

now! 
For I shall not find a wise man among you. 70 

Chap. xvii. 5-10. 

59, 60. Presumably an aphorism or proverbial expression 
which Job here quotes as applicable to his friends. Whoever 
betrays friends incurs a spiritual blindness which descends to 
his posterity. He has already said bitterly of them that they 
would make traffic over their friend (section iv. 55) ; he has 
convicted them also of speaking what is wrong, for God (sec- 
tion viii. 65). Hence the pertinence of the proverb, now that 
he is fully aware of their spiritual blindness. 

61. Job seems to take up typical language again, and to 
look upon himself as an object-lesson to the ages. 

65-68. This passage seems to prophesy that the bounds 
and definitions of righteousness are to be henceforth more 
clear by reason of his affliction ; his trial is to be the crucible 
in which great truths are wrought out. 

69, 70. To emphasize how far his thought has borne him 



X. JOB 227 



IV. 

" My days are past ; 

My plans are broken off, — 

The treasures of my heart. 

Night they put for day ; 

The light draweth near the face of darkness. 75 

If I have any hope, the grave is my house ; 

I have spread out my bed in the darkness. 

To corruption I have said, * My father thou ! ■ 

' My mother, and my sister ! ' — to the worm. 

And where is now my hope ? 80 

Yea, my hope — who shall discover it ? 

Will the bars of Sheol fall down, 

When together there is rest in the dust ? " 

Chap. xvii. 11-16. 

beyond them, he calls ironically to his friends, and throws 
despite on their wisdom. 

71 sqq. Job accepts the near doom of death, and draws con- 
sciously towards it, but with much more calmness than here- 
tofore, as if, whether explicable or not, it were surely right. 
This is certainly a step gained. 

76. The grave, — literally, Sheol ; but the word was often 
used as we use the word grave ; see note, section iv. 80. 



XI 

BILDAD 

And Bildad the Shuhite answered, and said : 

" How long will ye hunt for words ? 
Consider well, — and afterward will we speak. 
Wherefore are we accounted as the brute — 
Are regarded as vile in your eyes ? 5 

Thou that tearest thyself in thy rage, 
Shall the earth be forsaken for thy sake, 
And the rock be removed from its place ? 

Chap, xviii. 1-4. 

Line 2. Addressed to the other friends ; alluding to Job's 
reproach in the foregoing section (1. 8), that their pleas were 
only words, and implying that deeper arguments, founded 
more on the laboriously sought truth of things, must be ad- 
duced. 

4. Accounted as the brute, — this is merely the coarser and 
bitterer language in which Bildad interprets Job's assertion, 
" Their heart hast Thou hid from understanding " (section 
x. 57). 

6. Job's profound disturbance of soul seems to Bildad like 
rage, and to oppose the well-established conclusions of Wis- 
dom seems to him like the childish madness which would 
attempt to overthrow mountains. 



XL BILDAD 229 



" Verily, the light of the wicked shall go out, 

And the flame of his fire shall not shine. 10 

Light darkeneth in his tent, 

And his lamp above him goeth out. 

Straitened are the strides of his might ; 

And his own counsel casteth him down. 

For he is cast into a net by his own feet ; 15 

And he chooseth his way over a pitfall. 

The trap seizeth his heel ; 

The snare layeth fast hold upon him ; 

Hidden in the ground for him is a cord, 

And a noose for him in the pathway. 20 

Chap, xviii. 5-10. 

9. Bildad takes up the same theme that Eliphaz has laid 
down, — the fate of the wicked ; but he carries out his prom- 
ise (1. 3) to ground it more carefully in truth by hinting con- 
tinually at Job's condition, as a case in point. 

Line 9 is a stock assertion of Wisdom (see Proverbs xxiv. 
20), which Job submits, in section xiv. 32, to the test of ob- 
served fact. 

11. Perhaps an allusion to Job's complaint that God had 
" desolated his household," section x. 15 ; and the obverse of 
Eliphaz's assertion, section iii. 92. 

12. His lamp above him, — the great lamp suspended in 
the top of the tent. 

13. The wicked is represented as a wealthy and powerful 
man, in just such a condition as Job's has been. 

15-22. A kind of exaggeration of Eliphaz's words, section 
ix. 38-43, and making the wicked man's fate more definitely 
the consequence of his own foolish counsel and infatuation. 



23O THE BOOK OF JOB XI. 

Round about him terrors make him afraid, 

And chase him away at his heels. 

His might standeth hunger-bitten ; 

And ruin is ready at his side. 

It shall devour the parts of his skin ; 25 

It shall devour his members — the firstborn of 

death. 
He is torn out of his tent wherein he trusted, 
And he is led away to the king of terrors. 
There shall dwell in his tent that which is none 

of his ; 
Brimstone shall be showered on his habitation. 
Underneath, his roots dry up ; 31 

And from above, his branch withereth. 
His memory perisheth out of the earth ; 
And no longer hath he a name on the face of 

the fields. 
They drive him out from light into darkness, 35 

Chap, xviii. 11-18. 

21, 22. Bildad apparently alludes here, as Eliphaz has al- 
ready alluded, section ix. 40, to Job's description of his terri- 
fying visions, section iv. 90, 91. 

23-26. An allusion to Job's emaciation and disfigured con- 
dition ; see sections x. 16-18, 64 ; iv. 71, 72. 

27. Is not this a heartless allusion to Job as a leper, cast 
out of his tent to the ash-heap outside of the city, with an 
ill-concealed threat of death added thereto ? 

30. Apparently an allusion to the inhabitants of Sodom, 
Genesis xix. 24, who were historical types of extreme wicked- 
ness requited. 

35. They, — perhaps the mysterious unseen powers of Ne- 



XL BILDAD 231 

And chase him from the world. 

Offspring and descendant hath he none among 
his people ; 

Nor is there an escaped one in his dwelling- 
places. 

At his day shall they of later time.be aston- 
ished, 

As they that were before were seized with ter- 
ror. 40 

ir. 

" Verily, such are the dwellings of the wicked ; 
And this is the place of him that knoweth not 
God." 

Chap, xviii. 18-21. 

mesis and vengeance, whom Job has already referred to as 
pursuing him, section x. 22. 

37. Job's children, it will be remembered, have perished in 
his calamity. 

39, 40. Job conceives that the righteous shall be amazed 
at his case, section x. 65-68 ; Bildad makes the astonish- 
ment due to his wickedness. This same astonishment the 
friends have already shown, section i. 134-140 ; see also sec- 
tion iv. 43, and note. 



XII 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" How long will ye vex my soul, 

And break me in pieces with words ? 

These ten times do ye reproach me ; 

Ye are not ashamed to act as strangers to me. 



" And be it of a truth that I have erred, 
With me remaineth mine error. 

Chap. xix. 1-4. 

Line 2. Bildad's speech has been, as we have seen, an ex- 
asperating series of allusions to Job's diseased condition, as 
illustrating the punishment of the wicked and as prophesying 
worse things. Job does not yet answer these insinuations ; 
but they are not lost on him — only delayed. 

5. As strangers, — this idea furnishes the cue to the present 
section. They have ceased to be friends to him ; they coolly 
doom him to an awful fate, as if they had never had bonds of 
sympathy with him. To one like Job, who yearns for affec- 
tion and sympathy (see section iv. 56-61), this fact is the bit- 
terest drop in his cup. 

7. That is, Job's error, even supposing it real, is not a mat- 



XII. JOB 233 

If in sooth ye magnify yourselves against me, 
And prove against me my reproach, 
Know then that God hath wronged me, 10 

And hath encompassed me with His net. 
Behold, I cry out — violence ! — and am not 

heard ; 
I shriek for help, and there is no judgment. 
He hath fenced up my way, and I cannot pass ; 
And over my paths hath He set darkness. 15 
My glory hath He stripped off from me, 
And He hath taken the crown from my head. 
He breaketh me down on every side, — and I 

am gone ; 
And He uprooteth, like a tree, my hope. 
He maketh His anger burn against me, 20 

And counteth me as He doth His enemies. 

Chap. xix. 5-1 i. 

ter that concerns them, or that should operate to estrange 
them from him ; it is wholly between him and God. 

8-1 1. In these words Job makes his final defiant answer to 
his friends' insinuations ; they are fastening his " reproach " 
upon him as the deserving cause ; Job maintains unalterably 
that God has wronged him. If that be wickedness, let them 
make the most of it. 

12 sqq. As in burning indignation Job has portrayed his 
affliction before God, section x. 12-40, so now before his 
friends, in calmer and more pensive mood, he enlarges on his 
evil case. It is merely an amplification and summary of what 
he has said before. 

14, 15. Compare section ii. 47, 48. 

18. Compare section x. 80-83. 



234 THE BOOK OF JOB XII. 

Together come His troops ; 

And they cast up their way against me, 

And encamp round about my tent. 



ir. 

" My brethren hath He removed far from me ; 25 
And mine acquaintance are wholly estranged 

from me. 
My kinsfolk stand aloof ; 
And my familiar friends have forgotten me. 
Dwellers in my house, and my maids, — 
As a stranger they account me ; 30 

I am become an alien in their eyes. 
I call to my servant, and he answereth not ; 
I have to entreat him with my mouth. 
My breath is strange to my wife, 
And I am loathsome to the sons of my body. 35 
Even the boys despise me ; 

Chap. xix. 12-18. 

22-24. The recurring figure of a siege ; compare section x. 
30-34, and note there. 

25 sqq. Job now enlarges on what he suggested, 1. 5. As 
in section x. 12-40 he approached his belief in an Advocate 
through the thought of God's enmity to him, so here he ap- 
proaches his belief in a Redeemer, a next of kin, through the 
thought of the friendship that fails on earth, which thought 
he here sets forth in its strongest expression. It is in this 
thought of his loneliness that Job reaches here the profound- 
est depth of his trial ; here also we are brought nearest to 
the yearning human heart of the man. 



XII. JOB 235 

I try to rise, and they speak jeeringly against 

me. 
All mine inward friends abhor me ; 
And those I love have turned against me. 
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, 40 
And shrunk away is the covering of my teeth. 
Have pity on me, have pity on me, O ye my 

friends ! 
For the hand of God hath touched me ! 
Why do ye persecute me as God, 
And are not satisfied with my flesh ? 45 

in. 

" Oh that now my words were written ! 
Oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 

Chap. xix. 18-23. 

38. Mine inward friends •, — literally, men of my secret in- 
tercourse, or counsel. The same word is used for the friend- 
ship of God, section xx. 7. 

41. Of this line, whose expression is very obscure in the 
original, I take the view of Dr. Tayler Lewis. It seems to 
describe that corpse-like appearance of the leper, wherein the 
face seems like a half-covered skull, with teeth protruding 
and hollow eyes. 

44, 45. That is, why take God's prerogative in hand, and 
give reproach merely because He has inflicted suffering. It 
is a plea to let natural feelings of compassion have free 
course, and not to bestow their regards and reproaches theo- 
retically. 

46. The extreme depth of woe to which Job has just 
reached is immediately followed by a height of conviction so 
great and significant that Job would make the expression of 



236 THE BOOK OF JOB XII. 

That, with iron pen, and with lead, 
They were graven in the rock, for ever ! 

I know that my redeemer liveth ; 50 

That he will stand, survivor, over the dust ; 
And after my skin is gone, they will rend this 
body, 

Chap. xix. 24-26. 

it monumental, permanent. In the same way Job has called 
solemn attention before to assertions that in his view are 
especially important; see section viii. 63, jy, 85. This, how- 
ever, as being his supreme confession, reached by long strug- 
gle through darkness, is prefaced by the most emphatic note 
of attention. 

48. A reference to the ancient manner of engraving inscrip- 
tions on the rocks. After being cut in, the lines were filled 
with molten lead, and thus made more legible and permanent. 

50. My redeemer> — so it seems best to translate here, 
rather than disturb the associations of the passage ; because 
not enough would be gained by the more accurate term 
Avenger to pay for the change. The word denotes the next 
of kin, whose duty it was to avenge the blood of a murdered 
man (see Numbers xxxv. 19), and to succor the bereaved and 
needy (see Ruth iii. 9-13; iv. 1-8). With wonderful skill Job 
chooses the word that gathers into itself all that he has longed 
for ; it means one who will befriend him, avenge his wrong, be 
his Daysman, make God his friend again. Note too that it is 
the word to which he was led through the thought of failing 
earthly friendship, just as the word Advocate was the term to 
which he was led through the thought of God's injustice and 
enmity ; section x. 44. 

52. They will rend, — the mysterious they again (see sec- 
tions x. 22 ; xi. 35) ; unnamable powers of destiny. — This 
body ; only the word this is expressed in the original ; and 
Job may be thought of as indicating by a gesture his wasted 
frame, too loathsome and disfigured to be named. 



XII. JOB 2$7 

And I, from my flesh, shall see God ; 
Whom I shall see, I, for myself ; 
Whom mine eyes shall behold, a stranger no 
more. 55 

Oh, for this my reins consume within me ! 

IV. 

" If ye say, ■ How we will persecute him ! ' 

Chap. xix. 26-28. 

53. From my flesh, — in this translation I have preserved 
exactly the same ambiguity that exists in the original : it may 
mean either being in the flesh and looking out, or being out 
of the flesh. The context favors the latter meaning ; but 
nothing positive can be gathered, nor do I believe the dis- 
crimination was in the author's mind between disembodied 
immortality and resurrection of the body. I am inclined to 
think it is an emphatic way of saying " in my truest self," the 
word flesh being used somewhat as the word for bone is used 
in a common Hebrew idiom ; e. g., " as the bone of heaven," 
for " as the heaven itself," Exodus xxiv. 10. 

55. Even yet Job does not clearly identify the Redeemer 
with God; he merely says that in consequence of the Re- 
deemer's living and representing his cause he shall see God, 
and God will be his friend. Still the remarkable Messianic 
idea lingers, which we have noticed in other passages ; and 
we hardly know whether the author is thinking of one being 
or two. But there is a great advance beyond the idea of sec- 
tion x. 43-48 ; for there God had not ceased to be an enemy 
who was to be conciliated through an Advocate ; here God 
is " a stranger no more." 

57-61. It is quite in accordance with Job's custom else- 
where (see sections x. 69, 70 ; xiv. 68, 69 ; xvi. 92, 93) to fol- 
low one of his passages of deep and true insight by a note of 
warning in which the friends' purblindness is recognized. 



238 THE BOOK OF JOB XII. 

And that the root of the matter is found in 

me, — 
Be ye afraid of the sword ; 
For there is wrath against the sins of the 

sword, 60 

That ye may know there is a judgment." 

Chap. xix. 28, 29. 

This is the most solemn passage of the kind, as befits the 
lofty reach of faith that precedes it. 

58. That is, if ye still maintain (compare 11. 8, 9) that I am 
the culprit, that the cause of this punishment lies in my guilt. 
Job seems to think, what also has been intimated before (see 
sections iii. 44, note ; iv. 61, note ; see also xix. 4-7), that his 
spiritual insight achieving this revelation of a vindication after 
death proves his heart and conduct also pure. Both he and 
the friends would deny true insight to a wicked man. 

59. That is, the sword of God's wrath, of which they are in 
danger if they set themselves against a conviction so pure as 
this of his. 

From this point onward, Job no more struggles with the 
problem of death ; a fact which indicates that the immortality 
here recognized is henceforth taken for granted. Nor is God 
any more regarded as an enemy ; note rather the different at- 
titude in section xvi. 4-13. 



XIII 

ZOPHAR 

And Zophar the Naamathite answered, and 
said : 

" Therefore do my thoughts give me answer, 
And for such cause is this my haste within 

me, — 
Chiding, to my reproof, must I hear ! 
And the spirit out of mine understanding re- 

plieth. 5 

Chap. xx. 1-3. 

Line 2. Therefore, — referring forward to line 4. Zophar 
replies with headlong haste, being incensed at Job's insinu- 
ation that they who have preached repentance to him are 
themselves in imminent danger of sin. — My thoughts, — the 
same word that is used of the "wandering thoughts" of 
Eliphaz's vision ; see section iii. 24, note. It may indicate 
here the tumultuous emotions that have been roused by his 
indignation, a rush and confusion of thought. 

5. Spirit, — in the sense of zeal. In section xi. Bildad pro- 
fessed to give a well-considered speech (1. 3), and made it a 
series of undisguised allusions to the various features of Job's 
calamity, which he employed as a portrayal of the wicked ; 
Zophar, impelled by hot zeal and indignation, draws a picture 
that is declamatory, intemperate, and largely fanciful, having 
little if any traceable connection with sober fact 



240 THE BOOK OF JOB XIII. 



" What ! thou surely knowest this, from of old, 
Since Adam was placed upon the earth, 
That the triumph of the wicked is short-lived, 
And the joy of the ungodly but for a moment. 
Though his summit mount up to heaven, 10 
And his head reach unto the clouds, 
Yet like his own dung shall he perish utterly ; 
They that see him shall say, Where is he ? 
Like a dream he flitteth, and js no more found, 
And he is chased away, as a spectre of the 

night. 15 

Eye hath looked upon him, — it looketh not 

again ; 

Chap. xx. 4-9. 

6. From of old, — what Zophar says, though exaggerated 
by passion and rhetoric, is really one of the long-settled re- 
sults of Wisdom, which he is astonished to hear traversed. 

8. The triumph of the wicked, — perhaps an allusion to 
Job's solemn exaltation in his discovery of a Redeemer, sec- 
tion xii. 50-56. Strange blindness, that would view such a 
triumph as the triumph of the wicked ! 

10. The rhetorical tendency of Zophar's speech is manifest 
especially in his labored amplification of each picture that he 
brings up, with the evident attempt to make everything as 
vivid and intense as possible; note this in 11. 10-15; 22-31 ; 
33 ; 3°-4°; 47-51* He lets his imagination riot in terrific 
images. 

16. Hath looked, — the original word means a mere momen- 
tary glance, as if he had vanished in a twinkling. 



XIII. ZOPHAR 24I 

And no more shall his place behold him. 
His sons shall seek the favor of the poor ; 
And his hands shall restore his wealth. 
His bones are full of his youth, 20 

But it shall lie down with him in the dust. 

11. 

" Though evil is sweet in his mouth, 

And he hideth it under his tongue, 

Spareth it, and is loath to let it go, 

And holdeth it back in his palate, 25 

Yet in his bowels his bread is changed, 

It is the gall of asps within him. 

He hath swallowed down riches, and must 

vomit them up ; 
Out of his belly God will cast them forth. 
It is the poison of asps that he sucketh in ; 30 
The tongue of the adder shall slay him. 
Never more shall he gaze upon the streams, 
The floods, the brooks of honey and cream. 

Chap. xx. 9-17. 

20. His youth, — the strength, the vigor, of youth. 

22 sqq. Another rhetorical tendency is manifest here, in 
Zophar's evident desire to trace the wicked man's fate as a 
history, from the height of his prosperity to the fearful dis- 
aster at death. 

26. It is to this that Zophar reduces the prosperity of the 
wicked, — the wicked seeming to enjoy, perhaps really enjoy- 
ing, the first taste of evil, but finding it unreal and bitter to 
his soul. A picture not without basis, but conceived here in 
mere fancy. 



242 THE BOOK OF JOB XIII. 

He must restore the fruit of toil, and not de- 
vour it ; 
As borrowed wealth it is, and he hath no joy 
therein ; 35 

Because he oppressed, he abandoned the poor, 
Seized upon a house that he would not build, — 
Because he knew not rest in his belly, 
In his greed would let nothing escape, — 
No, not a shred that he could devour, — 40 

Therefore his prosperity shall not endure ; 
In the fullness of his abundance shall he be 

straitened ; 
Upon him shall come every hand of the 
wretched. 
So shall it be, until his belly is filled : 
He shall cast upon him the fire of His wrath, 45 
And shall rain it upon him with his food. 
Fleeth he from the iron armor, 
The bow of brass pierceth him through ; 
He draweth it out, — and it cometh forth from 

his body, 
The gleaming shaft, from his gall, — so 

Terrors come upon him ! 

All darkness is laid up for his hid treasures ; 

Chap. xx. 18-26. 

37. Compare section ix. 54-56. The friends seem to have 
in mind some notorious evil of rich men seizing houses by 
violence and turning them to their own use. 



XIII. ZOPHAR 243 

A fire not blown shall consume him ; 

It shall feed upon the last remnant in his tent. 

Heaven shall reveal his iniquity, 55 

And earth shall rise up against him. 

The increase of his house shall depart, 

Shall flow away in the day of His wrath. 

in. 

" Such is the portion of the wicked man, from 

God, 
And the heritage decreed from the Mighty 

One." so 

Chap. xx. 26-29. 

53. A fire not blown, — self -enkindled, so eager is it to burn. 

59, 60. It seems to be the author's intention in this speech 
to run the friends' threefold portrayal of the fate of the 
wicked into mere froth and declamation, which soon Job's 
honest sense will sweep away. The whole, though the most 
violent and vivid of the three, is after all vague : the horrible 
woes it denounces on the wicked are not referred to cause 
and ground, nor are they easily verifiable in fact. 



XIV 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" Hear, oh hear ye my word, 

And be this the ' consolations ' ye give. 

Suffer me, and I will speak ; 

And after I have spoken, — then mock thou, s 

i. 

" As for me, is my complaint unto man ? 

Chap. xxi. 1-4. 

The three friends have all spoken in the same strain, por- 
traying in violent and exaggerated terms the doom of the 
wicked ; but to their arguments Job has deigned no answer 
until now. The present speech, however, squarely traverses 
what they have said, and indicates that he has merely waited 
for what all had to urge, that he might answer all of them at 
once. 

Line 3. Consolations, — an allusion to" the consolations of 
God " (section ix. 20), with which Eliphaz has plied him. 

6. Zophar's heat and haste arose from the " chiding " that 
he must hear (section xiii. 4), as if it were a personal matter ; 
Job's complaint is directed not against man, but against what 
he must see in the world. 



XIV. JOB 245 

And wherefore should not my spirit be short- 
ened ? 
Turn ye unto me, and be amazed, 
And lay hand upon mouth. 
Even as I think thereon, I am dismayed, 10 
And shuddering seizeth on my flesh. 

Wherefore do the wicked live, 
Become old, yea, wax mighty in power? 
Their seed is established around them, in their 

sight, 
And their offspring before their eyes. 15 

Their houses are peace, far from fear ; 
And no rod of God is upon them. 
Their bull gendereth, and doth not fail ; 

Chap. xxi. 4-10. 

7. Alluding, perhaps, to what Eliphaz has said to him, sec- 
tion ix. 22-25, and Bildad, section xi. 6. 

8-1 1. The friends have so reveled in their highly colored 
descriptions that they have almost exulted over the fate of 
the wicked ; Job, on the other hand, full of sympathy with 
right and truth, must view with amazement the confused 
order of things : it is not what he wishes to see. 

12 sqq. This is the appeal to plain and palpable fact which 
Job sets over against the friends' theory. It is essentially 
the expansion of what he has touched upon before ; see sec- 
tions vi. 45, 77 ; viii. 12-14. 

14 sqq. Of course Job does not mean to say that they have 
all this material welfare because they are wicked ; that is not 
the issue. His point, made against the whole tenor of the 
friends' arguments, is simply that, being wicked, they are not 
treated according to their wickedness. Contrary to the law 
of Hebrew Wisdom they are prospered in the earth ; they 



246 THE BOOK OF JOB XlV. 

Lightly calveth their cow, and casteth not her 

calf. 
They send forth their little ones like a flock, 20 
And their children dance. 
They sing to timbrel and harp, 
And rejoice at the sound of the pipe. 
They fill out their days in weal ; 
And in a moment they sink down to the 

grave. 25 

And yet they said unto God, ' Depart from us ; 
The knowledge of Thy ways we desire not. 
What is the Almighty, that we should serve 

Him? 
And what gain we, if we pray unto Him ? ' 

Chap. xxi. 10-15. 

have the pleasures of sin and the good of life too ; so that on 
the mere scale of justice, if that is all that governs the uni- 
verse, in a very true sense " the earth is given over into the 
hands of the wicked " (section vi. 45). 

24, 25. That is, not a moment is left, so far as we can see, 
for the fearful doom that has been ascribed to them. This 
is a square contradiction of what all the friends have main- 
tained ; see especially sections ix. 38-47 ; 59-61 ; xi. 27, 28, 
35, 36 ; and most recklessly stated of all, xiii. 44-58. 

28. Observe how the wicked speak of God as what, a neu- 
ter, a thing, to be taken advantage of ; all their thought is 
pitched in the key of selfishness and gain. This is Job's por- 
trayal of the exact opposite of his own feeling ; to him such 
a spirit is the centre of all wickedness. 



XIV. JOB 247 

II. 
" Behold, not in their hand is their weal. 30 

The counsel of the wicked — be it far from me ! 

in. 

" How often doth the lamp of the wicked go 

out, 
And their destruction come upon them, 
Or He distribute woes in His anger ? 
How often are they as straw before the wind, as 
And as chaff which the storm snatcheth 

away ? 
1 God lay eth up his iniquity for his children ' ? — 

Chap. xxi. 16-19. 

30. Yet Job does not say this, as the friends assert after- 
ward (see sections xv. 28, 29; xxiii. 12-17, 76-80), because he 
is in sympathy with wicked ways ; it is mere loyalty to fact 
that compels the admission. Nor does he maintain that they 
are the authors of their own weal ; it is still, in some myste- 
rious way which none have found out, in the hands of God. 

32. How often ? A challenge as to the truth of Bildad's 
assertion, section xi. 9-12. The friends ought to specify how 
universal a fact their theory contemplates ; ft is in truth not 
universal enough, not distinctive enough, to be a fact at all. 

35. Job quotes the substance of his friends' assertions here, 
though not in the same imagery; compare sections xi. 21, 22 ; 
35, 36; xiii. 14, 15. 

37. This question is a fair representation, in more con- 
densed form, of what the friends have maintained ; see sec- 
tions iii. 50-52 ; xiiL 18-21. 



248 THE BOOK OF JOB XIV. 

On him let Him requite, and he shall feel it ; 
Let his own eyes see his ruin, 
And let himself drink from the wrath of the 
Almighty. 40 

For what careth he for his house after him, 
When the number of his months is cut off ? 

Shall any teach knowledge unto God, — 
Him — who judgeth them that are high ? 
One dieth in the fullness of his strength, 45 
All at ease and quiet, — 
His vessels full of milk, 

And the marrow of his bones well moistened ; 
And another dieth with a bitter soul, 
And hath never tasted of good. 50 

Chap. xxi. 19-25. 

3& sq. Out of Job's strong sense of justice rises this de- 
mand for the individual punishment of the wicked. It is the 
earliest remonstrance against the old Hebrew idea that pos- 
terity suffers for ancestral sins ; a remonstrance that becomes 
incorporated in revealed prophetic word, in Ezekiel xviii. 
See also Jeremiah xxxi. 29, 30. The human, out of its own 
needs and insight, makes the discovery, and in due time the 
divine comes to define and sanction it. 

41. What careth he ? It is from the depth of Job's unsel- 
fish love that the foregoing demand comes ; for he sees that 
in the cold selfishness of the wicked punishment reserved for 
posterity does not touch his soul at all, — it does not punish 
sin of that kind. 

45-52. These lines describe the accurate fact, so far as we 
can see ; namely, that righteous and wicked fare alike ; moral 
desert, at least on this earth, having apparently nothing to do 
with their doom. 



XIV. JOB 249 

Together they lie down, in the dust, 

And the worm spreadeth a covering over them. 

IV. 

" Behold, I know your thoughts, 

And the devices whereby ye wrong me. 

For ye say, ' Where is the tyrant's house, 55 

And where the tent, wherein the wicked 

dwelt ? ' 
Have ye not inquired of the wayfarers ? 
And do ye not know their tokens, — 
That in the day of destruction the wicked is 

spared, 
That in the day of wrath they are led away ? eo 
Who then will declare his way to his face ? 
And hath he done aught, who will requite it 

unto him ? 
For he — he is carried to his grave, 



Chap. xxi. 26-32. 

53, 54. Job divines the answer that is in their mind, a kind 
of manufactured answer urged out of spite, and meets it. 

55. They are supposably asking him to adduce cases that 
prove their wholesale assertions untrue. 

57. And Job replies that the prosperity of the wicked, 
which he proceeds again to enlarge upon, is so notorious that 
all who travel abroad, who look about them at all, cannot 
fail to observe it. 

59 sqq. We are still to bear in mind here what has been 
said in the note to 1. 14 sqq. It is a portrayal of what is as 
likely to befall the wicked as the righteous. 



2 SO THE BOOK OF JOB XIV. 

And watch is kept over his tomb ; 

Sweetly lie upon him the clods of the valley ; 65 

And after him draw all men, 

As there were numberless before him. 

v. 

" How then comfort ye me with vanity, 
Since your answers remain falsehood ? " 

Chap. xxi. 32-34. 

66. Men follow and imitate the wicked, just as they do the 
good; it is the rule of the world'to imitate success, apart from 
moral considerations. Compare Ecclesiastes iv. 15, 16. 

69. Falsehood, — that is, untrue to obvious fact. 



XV 

ELIPHAZ 

And Eliphaz the Temanite answered, and 
said : 

I. 

" Can a man be profitable unto God, 

As the prudent getteth profit unto himself ? 

Is it a pleasure to the Almighty that thou art 
righteous, 

Or is it a gain, that thou makest thy ways per- 
fect ? 5 

Is it for thy piety that He reproveth thee, — 

Chap. xxii. 1-4. 

Lines 2, 3. The expression here is a little obscure on ac- 
count of the turning around of the comparison. It means, 
" Is man's righteousness a thing out of which God gets profit, 
as a prudent man turns things to his advantage. " 

4, 5. This question merely embodies the logical sequence 
of Eliphaz's favorite doctrine, expressed in sections iii. 33-37 ; 
ix. 26-31. The doctrine removes God to such an inaccessi- 
ble distance that He is really unaffected by either righteous- 
ness or wickedness : He rewards and punishes in an abstract, 
mechanical way, merely because He has made it the law of a 
universe which He is sitting outside of and seeing go. 

6. Eliphaz's syllogism is very simple. God is evidently 



252 THE BOOK OF JOB XV. 

That He cometh with thee into judgment ? 

May not thy wickedness be great, 

And no end to thine iniquities ? 

For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother 

causelessly, 10 

And stripped off the clothes of the naked ; 
Thou hast given no water to the faint, 
And from the hungry hast withholden bread ; 
While the man of the strong arm — his was 

the land, 
And the respected of persons dwelt therein ! 15 
Widows hast thou sent away empty ; 



Chap. xxii. 4-9. 

punishing Job. It cannot be for righteousness. Hence it 
must be for wickedness. 

7. Thus Eliphaz comes at last to his final shot, — the direct 
charge of wickedness against Job. It is, as we see, merely a 
conclusion of dialectics, which his doctrine of man's necessary 
and inevitable corruption bears him out in drawing. Has not 
the doctrine of total depravity in our own day brought forth 
just as grave, if not so particular, accusations of sin ? 

10 sqq. These specific charges are of course wholly theo- 
retic, nor are they inaptly made. They name such things as 
might be done by a busy rich man like Job, through forget- 
fulness or indifference, or such things as may have been done 
in his name by servants. Any of them might take place at 
the gate of a prince without his knowledge. The expression 
" man of the strong arm/' 1. 14, by which Eliphaz character- 
izes such as Job, shows how he accounts for such sin : the 
man whose strength and wealth, and whose absorption with 
his favored friends (1. 1 5), make him indifferent to needs and 
distress because removed from them. 



XV. ELIPHAZ 253 

And the arms of the fatherless have been 

broken. 
Therefore it is that snares are about thee, 
And fear terrifieth thee suddenly. 
Or seest thou not the darkness, 20 

And the deluge of waters that covereth thee ? 

Is not God the summit of heaven ? 
And see the crown of the stars — how high ! 
And so thou sayest, ' What doth God know ? 
Can He judge through the thick cloud ? 25 

Clouds are a covering to Him, and He seeth 

not ; 
And He walketh by Himself on the vault of 

heaven.' 

11. 

" Wilt thou cherish the way of old, 
Wherein trod the men of wickedness ? 

Chap. xxii. 9-15. 

18, 19. Such is the ground on which Eliphaz interprets 
Job's dismay and amazement confessed in the previous sec- 
tion (8-1 1)! 

20, 21. As much as to say, Your suffering is a fact, — why 
do you thus ignore it, and what else can you make of it ? 

22-27. Another way, this, of accounting for Job's theorized 
lapse into sin, — he may have supposed that God would not 
see him, being so far away. To whom so naturally as to 
Eliphaz would such a reason occur ? At the same time it is 
not improbable that he has in mind Job's complaints of God's 
remoteness ; see sections vi. 20, 21 ; viii. 99; xii. 12-15. 

28 sqq. To Eliphaz Job's candid acknowledgment of 



254 THE BOOK OF JOB XV. 

Who were snatched away, and the time was 

not yet ; 30 

Whose foundation flowed away, a river. 
Who said unto God, ' Depart from us ; ' 
And, ' What will the Almighty do unto us ? ' 
And yet — ' He filleth their houses with good/ 

thou sayest ; 
While also thou sayest, ' The counsel of the 

wicked be far from me ! ' 35 

The righteous see, and are glad ; 
And the innocent make a by-word of them : 
'Verily/ they say, 'our adversaries are cut 

down, 
And their remains doth the fire devour/ 

Chap. xxii. 16-20. 

wicked prosperity seems dangerously near " cherishing n 
wicked ways. 

32, 33. Eliphaz quotes nearly the same questions attributed 
by Job to the wicked who were prospered (section xiv. 
26-28), to characterize the wicked of old who were snatched 
away. Thus by going back to antiquity he makes his only 
attempt to disprove Job's appeal to fact. 

34. A condensation of what Job has said, section xiv. 
14-24. 

35. See section xiv. 31. 

36-39. Job has viewed the confused order of things with 
amazement and dismay, nor does he exult over the wicked ; 
and thereby, thinks Eliphaz, he proves himself a sympathizer 
with evil. A righteous man will curse where God has pun- 
ished ; compare section iii. 49. That is the way to " justify 
God ; V perhaps, also, it is his covert way of defending his 
treatment of Job. 



XV. ELIPHAZ 255 

III. 

" Reconcile thyself with Him now, and be at 
peace ; 40 

Thereby good shall come unto thee. 
Receive now instruction from His mouth, 
And lay up His words in thy heart. 
If thou wilt return to the Almighty, thou shalt 

be built up, — 
So thou removest iniquity far from thy tents; — 
And put thou thy precious ore in the dust, 46 
And Ophir in the stones of the brooks ; 
So shall the Almighty be thy precious ore, 
And silver of the mine shalt thou have. 

Chap. xxii. 21-25. 

40. Reconcile thyself. This word, presupposing guilt and 
sin on Job's part, is what invalidates the whole force of this 
beautiful passage, which is the final appeal of the friends to 
Job. Abstractly there is nothing whatever to be urged 
against the lines ; but in implication, and as here applied, 
they gather into themselves all the charges that Eliphaz has 
made. 

45. It has been pointed out before (see sections v. 10, note ; 
vii. 27, 28) how in their exhortations the friends put in a sly 
clause presupposing Job's iniquity. 

46. That is, despise earthly riches, renounce the affection 
for wordly goods which has made thee presumably indifferent 
to the poor. 

47. Ophir ) — that is, gold of Ophir. The gold was so 
much spoken of that the country where it was found came to 
designate it ; as we say damask and morocco for products of 
Damascus and Morocco. 



256 THE BOOK OF JOB XV. 

For then shall thy delight be in the Al- 
mighty ; 50 

And thou shalt lift up thy face unto God. 

Thou shalt pray to Him, and He will hear thee ; 

And thy vows shalt thou fully perform. 

Thou shalt purpose a thing, and it shall be 
established to thee ; 

And upon thy ways shall light shine. 55 

Though they lead downward, yet thou sayest, 
' Aloft ! ' 

And the lowly of eyes shall He save. 

He shall deliver him that is not guiltless ; 

Who will be delivered through the cleanness of 
thy hands." 

Chap. xxii. 26-30. 

51. Eliphaz has regarded Job as bitter and rebellious 
against God ; see section ix. 22-24. From such hard enmity 
he promises Job return. 

52. Alluding perhaps to Job's complaint, section xii. 12, 13. 
55. See section xii. 15. 

57. Eliphaz has already asked Job, " Why quiver thine 
eyes ? n (section ix. 23), as if Job were angry and defiant ; 
and this is the contrast that he would inculcate. 

58, 59. It is worthy of note that in his closing words Eli- 
phaz prophesies what actually did take place, section xxx. ; 
only the friends were the ones who were " not guiltless," and 
Job's whole course was on the highest authority justified. 



XVI 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" Defiant, even to-day, is my complaint, 
Though my hand lieth heavy on my groaning. 



" Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! — 
Might come even unto His dwelling-place ! 5 
I would set in order my cause before Him ; 
And I would fill my mouth with arguments. 
I would know the words He would answer me ; 
And I would mark what He would say unto 
me. 

Chap, xxiii. 1-5. 

Line 2. Defiant, — that is, defying his efforts at repression, 
and ready to break forth in spite of him. 

4 sqq. Job's "complaint" does not begin till L 14; he de- 
lays it long enough to give a brief but fervent response to 
Eliphaz's exhortation. Eliphaz has bidden him return to God 
(section xv. 40-44), and given him sweet promises if he 
will so do ; Job takes him at his word, so far forth at least, 
that he longs supremely after God's presence ; though he 
turns to God not as a sinner, but as a man with a just and 
righteous cause. 



258 THE BOOK OF JOB XVI. 

Would He plead against me in the greatness 
of His might ? 10 

Nay ; but surely He would give heed unto me. 

There it would be an upright man pleading 
with Him ; 

And I should be delivered for ever from my 
Judge. 

ii. 

" Behold, I go eastward, but He is not there ; 
And toward the west, yet I perceive Him 

not ; 15 

Northward, where He worketh, but I discover 

Him not ; 
And in the south He hideth Himself, and I 

see Him not. 
Yet He knoweth the way that is mine ; 

Chap, xxiii. 6-10. 

10. This question, with its negative answer, indicates how 
far Job has advanced in his conviction of God's favor since 
he conquered his way to the assurance that his Redeemer 
liveth. He is sure now that if he could find God he would 
find Him a friend. 

12, 13. This utterance of calm confidence is just the oppo- 
site of that complaint of Job's earlier days, section vi. 26-29. 
Something has assuredly wrought to " remove God's hand 
from upon him " (sections vi. 66 ; viii. 93) ; it is that faith 
which has enabled him to identify God with his Advocate and 
Redeemer. 

18. Yet, — literally, for. It is an elliptical expression ; as if 
he had said, " Yet I will not despair for He knoweth," etc. 



XVI. JOB 259 

He is trying me : I shall come forth as gold. 
My foot hath held fast unto His steps ; 20 

His way have I kept, and turned not aside, — 
The precept of His lips, and have not shunned 

it. 
More than aught mine own have I treasured 

the words of His mouth. 
But He — He abideth the same ; who shall 

turn Him ? 
Yea, His soul desireth, and He doeth it. 25 

For He will accomplish the thing appointed 

for me, 
And like these, many things that are with 

Him. 

Chap, xxiii. 10-14. 

This, too, is a discovery of Job's faith to be carefully noted. 
It anticipates what Elihu urges afterward, sections xxii. and 
xxv. Job, on his stoutly maintained ground of integrity, has 
discovered the solution of his affliction. — The way that is 
mine, literally, that is with me ; the same particle whose 
intimacy of relation has been mentioned, section vi. 69, note ; 
my truest, sincerest, most habitual way. 

23. More than aught mine own, — literally, more than mine 
own law or behest. An obscure expression, but seeming to 
mean, " more than anything to which I give authority or con- 
trol," that is, whatever is most mine. 

24. In the light of Job's new solution note how differently 
God's dealings look to him. He sees the same changeless, 
inexorable, inscrutable work that he contemplated in sections 
vi. 6-27 ; viii. 27-52 ; and the sight fills him with trembling 
awe (compare section xiv. 7-11); but he does not, as then, 
trace in it God's injustice and persecution ; he is content to 



26o THE BOOK OF JOB XVI. 

Therefore it is that I tremble before Him, — 
That I consider, and am afraid of Him ; 
And it is God that maketh my heart soft ; 30 
The Almighty it is that confoundeth me. 
For I am not dismayed by the face of dark- 
ness, 
Nor by mine own face, which thick gloom 
veileth. 

in. 

'" Why are not judgment-times determined by 

the Almighty ? 
And they that know Him — why see they not 

His days ? 35 

Chap, xxiii. 15 — xxiv. 1. 

let it be so, though wondering at its darkness. This is his 
only remaining problem, and it is to this that the Lord ad- 
dresses His words from the whirlwind, sections xxvi. and 
xxviii. 

32. Job has long ago taken leave of personal fear (see sec- 
tions vi. 40 ; viii. 77-80) ; he has approached death with calm 
readiness (see section x. 71 sqq. note) ; and now he has got 
beyond the dismay due to disease and blasted hope (contrast 
sections vi. 32-35; 54; 105-107; x. 14-34; xii. 16-19). Surely 
a great advance ; he has almost reached his goal. 

34, 35. Here Job propounds his one remaining problem. 
It is the problem that dismayed him in the previous section 
(xiv. 10-13), and that is M defiant " in this (11. 2,3), namely, 
why God does not, in His dealings with men, so determine the 
bounds of right and wrong, that those who know Him can 
trace the principles of His working. Why are things so 



XVI. JOB 26l 

There are who remove landmarks ; 
Who seize upon flocks and pasture them ; 
The ass of the fatherless they drive away ; 
They take for pledge the ox of the widow. 
They thrust the needy out of the way ; 40 

The poor of the land must hide themselves to- 
gether. 
Behold these then ! wild asses in the desert ; 

Chap. xxiv. 2-5. 

turned around — the righteous afflicted, the wicked secure in 
impunity ? The former of these he has just answered for 
himself '(11. 18, 19) ; now he addresses himself to the latter. 

36 sqq. The ensuing lines portray forms of wickedness that 
were doubtless most prevalent at the time when the Book of 
Job was written. They seem to indicate a time when classes 
were sharply distinguished ; the rich becoming richer and more 
heartless, the poor thrust into a more grinding and hopeless 
poverty. Such times consist best with long settled national 
prosperity, free from political and social upheavals, such as 
we can most reasonably associate with the later years of the 
Jewish monarchy. 

36. There are who remove landmarks. It is noteworthy that 
in the first appendix to the original Solomonic Proverbs, 
made near the time when the Book of Job was supposably 
written, the injunction is twice given "not to remove the an- 
cient landmark " (Prov. xxii. 28 ; xxiii. 10) ; and that in Deu- 
teronomy, whose composition (or at least publication) dates 
from a time not long after, the same injunction is both given 
as a commandment (Deut. xix. 14) and sanctioned by a curse 
(Deut. xxvii. 17). This would seem to indicate that the re- 
moval of landmarks, that is, wicked and unscrupulous en- 
largement of property-holdings, was one of the crying evils of 
this time. See Introductory Study, pp. 104, 108 sq. 

42. Namely, the poor of the land, who are forced to be- 



262 THE BOOK OF JOB XVI. 

They go forth in their work, seeking eagerly 

for prey ; 
The waste must be to them bread for their 

children. 
In the field they reap, each one, his fodder ; 45 
And they glean the vineyard of the wicked. 
Naked all night they lie, from lack of clothing ; 
And they have no covering in the cold. 
They are wet with the storm of the mountain ; 
And for lack of shelter they cling to the rock. 
There are who tear away the fatherless from 

the breast, 51 

And take what the poor have on for pledge. 
So these go about naked for lack of clothing, 
And hungry they carry the sheaf ; 
Between their walls these press out the oil ; 55 
They tread the wine- vats and suffer thirst. 
Groans arise from the city of the dying, 
And the soul of the wounded crieth out ; 
And God regard eth not the enormity. 

There are of them that rebel against light, 60 

Chap. xxiv. 5-13. 

come wanderers and outlaws, gathering a precarious subsist- 
ence from land that is not theirs. 

55. Between their walls, — namely, the walls of the rich 
wicked, by whom they are so ground down with labor and en- 
slaved, that they have to go hungry in the midst of abundance. 

59. Enormity, — in choosing this word I follow the transla- 
tion of Dr. Tayler Lewis. The original is the same word 
translated " aught unbeseeming," in section i. %&> where see 



XVI. JOB 263 

That regard not the ways thereof. 

Nor abide in its trodden paths. 

With the light riseth up the murderer ; 

He slayeth the poor and the needy ; 

And in the night he is as a thief. 6.5 

The eye of the adulterer, too, watcheth for the 
gloom, 

Saying, No eye shall spy me out ! 

And he putteth a covering upon his face. 

Men dig through houses in the darkness ; 

In the daytime they shut themselves up ; 70 

They know not the light. 

For morning to them is just like midnight ; 

Yea, they know well the terrors of the mid- 
night ! 

IV. 

" ' Fleeting he is/ ye say, ■ on the face of the 

waters ; 

Chap. xxiv. 13-18. 

note. The same root occurs in its literal meaning, section 
iv. it, where it is translated "tasteless." From " tasteless- 
ness " the word may get the meaning absurdity, anomaly, or, 
to use an analogous derivation, enormity (e-norma), some- 
thing monstrous, outside of orderly law and custom. 

61. The ways and trodden paths of light are simply the cus- 
toms of right living, to which murder and adultery and rob- 
bery are opposed. 

73. Midnight, which may contain terrors for others, is just 
the working-time and congenial season of these ; compare 
John iii. 20, 21. 

74-84. In these lines Job draws, I think, on the body of 



264 THE BOOK OF JOB XVI. 

Cursed the portion of such in the land ; 75 

He turneth not the way of the vineyards. 

Drought and heat bear away the snow-water, — 

The grave also them that have sinned. 

There the womb will forget him, 

While the worm batteneth upon him. so 

No more will he be remembered ; 

And like the tree iniquity shall be broken, — 

Even he who devoureth the barren that bear- 

eth not, 
And doeth no kindness to the widow/ 

Nay ; but He continueth the mighty by His 

power ; 85 

They rise up when they believed not that they 

would live. 
He giveth them to be secure, and they are at 

rest ; 
And His eyes are on their ways. 

Chap. xxiv. 18-23. 

Wisdom utterances from which the friends have freely quoted 
(see sections v. 21-38 ; ix. 38-71), and which we may presume 
to have been equally familiar to him (compare sections viii. 6 ; 
53-56; x. 2). From the same body of Wisdom he may have 
drawn, section viii. 27-52 ; and section xviii. 8-25 reads like a 
passage from the same collection of truth. The present pas- 
sage, while it does not quote words that the friends have ac- 
tually used, maintains the same general tenor of thought, and 
might well be put alongside of the words of Bildad, section v., 
or Eliphaz, section ix. It is as if Job had said, I call in ques- 
tion the whole Wisdom teaching on this point. 
85-91. Having made his quotation, Job shows how one- 



XVI. JOB 265 

They rise to eminence ; — a little while, and 

they are not ! 
They are brought low ; like all others they are 

gathered in, 90 

And are cut off, like the heads of corn. 

v. 

" If it be not so, who then will prove me false, 
And nmke my words come to nought ? " 

Chap. xxiv. 24, 25. 

sided it is by stating the actual fact. This passage is virtu- 
ally a repetition of what he has said, section xiv. 

92. Job's conclusive and triumphant victory over his friends 
is indicated by the challenge with which he here seals his 
words. No one takes it up ; for though Bildad yet speaks, 
his words are so aside from the issue as to be a virtual con- 
fession of defeat. 



XVII 

BILDAD 

And Bildad the Shuhite answered, and said : 

■m 
" Dominion and dread are with Him ; 

Who maketh peace in His high places. 

Is there any number to His armies ? 

And on whom riseth not His light ? 5 

How then shall mortal man be just with God ? 

And how shall the woman-born be clean ? 

Chap. xxv. 1-4. 

Bildad responds wholly without the rancor and bitterness 
that have characterized the friends' answers hitherto, and 
with general considerations quite apart from the question at 
issue. Perhaps it is Job's persistent affirmation of his integ- 
rity, section xvi. 20-23, that immediately calls them forth ; 
but Bildad no longer makes it a personal matter, and seems 
to repeat his lesson almost mechanically, the chapter from 
his well-conned Wisdom which is least to be called in ques- 
tion. 

Line 3. An allusion, apparently, to some traditional con- 
flict in heaven wherein God was victor ; compare section vi. 
25, and note. 

6. The same doctrine that Eliphaz has twice propounded, 
once as the oracle of a vision (section iii. 33-43), and again 
as the sacred word which it were impiety to deny (section ix. 
26-31 ). All have taken it for granted, as the most indubitable 



XVII. BILDAD 267 

Behold, even the moon — it shineth not ; 
And the stars are not pure in His eyes ; 
How much less mortal man — a worm ! 10 

And the son of man — a caterpillar ! " 

Chap. xxv. 5, 6. 

conclusion of orthodoxy ; besides, it is the doctrine that the 
Wise Men can least afford to relinquish, being their conven- 
ienc solvent of the world's mysteries of evil and retribution. 
And it is this doctrine that Job's bold self-defense most rad- 
ically traverses. Not that Job really denies it; see, on the 
contrary, Job's words in section viii. 116, 117 ; but his point 
(see section vi. 33, note), that the proportion between man's 
doings and God's dealings with him is too obviously unre- 
lated to be made a criterion of justice, is lost on them. 



XVIII 

JOB 

And Job answered, and said : 

" How hast thou given help to the powerless ! 

How succored the nerveless arm ! 

How hast thou counseled the unwise, 

And made known truth in abundance ! 5 

To whom directest thou words ? 

And whose breath goeth forth from thee ? 



" The giant shades tremble 

Beneath the waters and their inhabitants. 

Chap. xxvi. 1-5. 

Job begins his answer by ridiculing Bildad's speech, inti- 
mating ironically that there is no savor, no depth or life, to 
his words. 

Line 6. Job's way of intimating that Bildad's words do 
not fit the case ; they have no direction. 

7. Whose breath, — that is, as inspiration. Evidently not 
the breath of Him whose words reach their aim, and impart 
knowledge and guidance. 

8. The giant shades, — the word translated shades (rephaim) 
is from a root meaning weak, powerless. But the same word 
is used to designate a race of giants, Genesis xiv. 5 ; xv. 20 ; 



XVIII. JOB 269 

Naked lieth Sheol before Him, 10 

And there is no covering to Abaddon. 

He stretcheth out the North over the void ; 

He hangeth the earth upon nothing. 

He bindeth the waters in His thick clouds, 

Chap. xxvi. 6-8. 

Isaiah xvii. 5. " Here, in fact," says Dr. Tayler Lewis, "the 
true force of the passage is best given by combining the two 
ideas : the once mighty men of old now feeble wailing ghosts." 

8 sqq. In the rest of the section Job takes up a strain sim- 
ilar to Bildad's, perhaps indeed a continuation of the same 
well-known chapter of Wisdom, which, beginning with the 
description of the heavens above, may have gone on to portray 
God's control over the regions beneath Both discourses 
have the same mythological cast, quite different from the rest 
of the book ; both are parts of the same general theme. Job 
carries on Bildad's unfinished thought, as if he had said : O 
yes ; I know the old story ; do not stop there, go on to the 
end, it is just as applicable. 

10, n. Beneath the sea somewhere, according to the old 
mythology, lay the world of the shades : Sheol, the general 
place of departed spirits ; Abaddon, the place where destruc- 
tion is decreed. It is like the Greek conception of Hades 
and Tartarus : — 

" Down to rayless Tartarus, 
Deep, deep, in the great Gulf below the earth, — 
As far beneath the Shades as earth from heaven." 

But how definite and localized these conceptions of the 
shades and their dwelling-place had become at the time when 
the Book of Job was written, it is impossible to say. 

12. The lYorth, — that is, probably the northern heavens. 
The void seems to be the great empty space between the earth 
and the stars. 

14. The phenomenon of clouds, wherein vast bodies of 



270 THE BOOK OF JOB XVIII. 

And the cloud is not rent under them. 15 

He closeth fast the face of His throne, 
Spreading out His cloud over it. 
He hath circled a bound on the face of the 

waters, 
Unto the margin of light with darkness. 
The pillars of heaven rock, 20 

And are aghast at His rebuke. 
By His power He quelleth the sea ; 
And by His skill He smiteth through Rahab. 
By His breath the heavens become serene ; 
His hand pierceth the flying serpent. 25 

11. 
" Behold, these are the outskirts of His ways ; 

Chap. xxvi. 8-14. 

water hung suspended over the earth, seems to have been an 
object of great wonder and interest to the Hebrews ; compare 
sections xxv. 55-64 ; xxvi. 54-59. 

18. This seems to be a poetic description of the horizon, 
especially as observed at sea. 

23. Rahab, — literally, the proud one, has already been 
mentioned by Job, section vi. 25. Some tradition, well known 
to Job's hearers, but lost to us, is referred to. 

24. To the Hebrews the wind was God's breath. 

25. The flying serpent, — " according to the ancient my- 
thology, it is the Dragon, or Serpent, which eclipses the sun by 
winding itself round it, and seeking to devour it." — Cox, In 
Isaiah li. 9, the dragon and Rahab are associated, very much 
as they are here ; see Cheyne's notes on Isaiah xxvii. 1 and 

ii. 9 . 



XVIII. JOB 271 

And what whisper of a word have we heard of 
Him! 

But the thunder of His power, who can under- 
stand?" 

Chap. xxvi. 14. 

28. What Job has described, drawing on the mythological 
ideas of the time, seems occult, but is in reality very easy 
compared with the great things that so perplex him. 



XIX 

JOB 

And Job took up his discourse further, and 
said : 

i. 

" As God liveth, who hath taken away my 

right, 
And the Almighty, who hath embittered my 

soul, — 
For yet whole is my breath within me, 

Chap, xxvii. 1-3. 

Line i. His discourse, — the Hebrew word mashal means 
discourse in sententious or gnomic style, as represented in 
proverbs and maxims. This was the style adopted as the 
vehicle of the Hebrew Wisdom (see Introductory Study, p. 
97), a style well adapted, with its condensed parallelisms, 
to the utterance of weighty and memorable truths. 

2. To what Job has yet to say, which may be regarded as 
a summary of his views and life, he prefixes the most solemn 
form of the Hebrew oath, " As God liveth." So sure is he of 
the integrity that the friends have so attacked, and of his 
true interpretation of God's workings. 

4, 5. This asseveration he makes, moreover, in full assur- 
ance of his spiritual soundness and sanity. Of this he has 
been certain all along (see sections iv. 59-61 ; viii. 23-26) ; and 



XIX. JOB 273 

And the spirit of God in my nostril, — 5 

So surely my lips speak not perverseness, 
Nor doth my tongue murmur deceit. 
Far be it from me that I should justify you ; 
Till my breath is gone will I not let depart 

mine integrity from me. 
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let 

it go ; 10 

My heart shall not reproach one of my days. 

11. 

" Be mine enemy as the wicked man, 
And he that riseth against me as the unright- 
eous. 

Chap, xxvii. 3-7. 

by reason of it he could detect and rebuke their blindness 
(see sections x. 56, 57 ; 69, 70 ; xii. 57-61 ) ; but they, on their 
part, have regarded his vision as perverted (see sections iii. 
44, and note; ix. 14-19; xv. 20, 21). A diseased body he 
may have, but it is no diseased utterance that he is to make. 

8. Justify you, — that is, in their identification of him with 
the wicked, and by consequence, in the general view of God's 
world, which this fundamental error of theirs darkens and 
perverts. 

12. So far from being a wicked man, he holds, as do they, 
the wicked in abhorrence. This he has already said (section 
xiv. 31) ; but they could not understand how he could at- 
tribute such prosperity to the wicked and yet not be in sym- 
pathy with them (section xv. 28-35). The mention of the 
wicked here gives occasion to introduce the subject again, 
and to settle it according to the insight of truth. Against 
their intemperate and one-sided portrayals he has already 



274 THE BOOK OF JOB XIX. 

For what is the hope of the godless, when He 

cutteth off, — 
When God draweth forth his soul ? is 

Will God hear his cry, 
When distress cometh upon him ? 
Doth he delight himself in the Almighty ? 
Doth he call upon God at every time ? 

I will teach you of the hand of God ; 20 

What is with the Almighty will I not conceal. 
Behold, ye, all ye, have seen it ; — 
Wherefore then this vanity, that ye vapor 

forth ? 

Chap, xxvii. 8-12. 

answered negatively, what the fate of the wicked is not ; 
now, free from the heat of controversy, he will give his view 
of what their fate is. 

14. What is the hope? — This is the keynote of Job's por- 
trayal of the wicked : they have no hope, no abiding future ; 
the permanency of things is not theirs. Job can see this 
clearly now, having conquered his way by faith to a hope be- 
yond this life. 

18. These words furnish an expressive indication of the 
pure standard of Job's righteousness : it is not merely service 
for reward, but delight in God, unselfish devotion to God for 
His own sake. The friends' conception has been distinctly 
lower than this ; and it is this that Job has maintained 
against Satan's sneer of the beginning. And now Job's con- 
ception of wickedness is just its opposite. To him nothing 
can be more deplorable than not to delight in God. 

20-23. J OD gives now his view of the real facts of life, a 
view which also they have pursued blindly ; but with their 
view has been mingled much " vanity ; n they have not seen 
the case in its real ground and perspective. How could 



XIX. JOB 275 

This is the portion of a wicked man with 

God, 
And the heritage of the violent, which they 

shall receive from the Almighty. 25 

If his children increase, it is for the sword ; 
And his offspring shall not be satisfied with 

bread. 
The remnants of his house shall be buried in 

pestilence, 
And his widows shall not make mourning. 
Though he heap up silver as the dust, 30 

And prepare raiment as the clay, — 

Chap, xxvii. 13-16. 

they, when they even viewed Job as wicked, and when they 
were entangled in the erroneous law of Wisdom, about pros- 
perity and calamity ? 

24 sqq. Job's portrayal, here beginning, is an exposition in 
poetic language of what we call the logic of events. It is 
the truth that only righteousness is well-built and permanent ; 
the logic of wickedness is decay and destruction. Violence 
begets and succumbs to violence ; being itself a tearing-down, 
it has no future to count upon. To this idea is naturally 
reducible all that Job here says, and all that is true in what 
the friends have said, sections v., ix., xi., and xiii. 

25. In considering these lines, bear in mind that the spe- 
cial aspect of wickedness that Job contemplates is violence, 
oppression, the aspect that was probably most prevalent in 
Job's time, and that was most directly opposed to his ideal 
of life. 

26. Of those who take the sword, the sword, sooner or 
later, is the doom. 

29. Violence and tyranny is a disintegrator even of natural 
affection. 



276 THE BOOK OF JOB XIX. 

He will prepare, and the righteous shall wear 

it; 
And the silver shall the innocent divide. 
He buildeth his house as doth the moth, 
And like a booth that a watchman maketh. 35 
He lieth down rich — and never again ! 
He openeth his eyes — and he is not ! 
Terrors overtake him as the waters ; 
By night a tempest stealeth him away ; 
An east wind lifteth him up, and he vanish- 

eth. 40 

It stormeth him forth from his place ; 
It hurleth against him, and spareth not ; 
Hither and thither he fleeth from its hand. 
Men clap their hands at him, 
And hiss at him from his desolated place. 45 

in. 

" There is indeed a vein for the silver, 
And a place for the gold that they refine. 

Chap, xxvii. 17 — xxvni. 1. 

32, 33. " But the meek shall inherit the earth." 

35. A booth, — such as were built for temporary shelter in 
vineyards and gardens ; compare Isaiah i. 8. 

37-45. The rest of the passage is an amplification, Ori- 
ental, but with this large interpretation not overwrought, of 
the same general idea of the instability and transitoriness 
of whatever is built on evil. 

46. Indeed, — literally, "for there is." The for I am 
inclined to view as equivalent to our idiom of a concessive 



XIX. JOB 277 

Iron is taken out of the soil, 

And molten stone becometh copper. 

Man setteth an end to darkness, 50 

And to the utmost limit he searcheth out 

The stone of darkness and of the shadow of 

death. 
He breaketh the ravine remote from the set- 
tler; 
And there, forgotten of the passer's foot, 

Chap, xxviii. 2-4. 

(indeed) preparing for a coming adversative (but) : " There 
is indeed a vein for the silver, . . . but wisdom, where shall 
it be found ? " 

The connection of this 28th chapter with the rest of the 
book has been a puzzle to some. But does it not follow 
naturally ? Having portrayed the extreme of unwisdom (with 
which in the old philosophy wickedness was identified), the 
life that has not the future nor is built therefor, it is natural 
that Job should next speak of its contrast, the true wisdom 
and foresight whereby to build human life and character. 
There are many marvelous things that man may know or 
search out ; but many also are unsearchable. He cannot see 
as God sees, perhaps cannot reach absolute truth. But there 
is a wisdom for him, which points to the absolute good as the 
needle points to the pole. 

The description of mining operations, 11. 46-69, is given 
with the vividness and accuracy of an eye-witness, and indi- 
cates that the writer was familiar with the mines of Egypt 
and the Sinai peninsula. 

50. An e7id to darkness, — that is, by illuminating it and 
discovering its secrets. 

52. Of the shadow of death, — this phrase indicates the un- 
canniness that the Hebrew associated with darkness. 



278 THE BOOK OF JOB XIX. 

They hang and swing, far off from mortal 

man. 
The earth — out of it cometh bread, 56 

And underneath it is upturned as it were by 

fire. 
Its stones are the place of the sapphire, 
And clods of gold are there ; — 
A path that no eagle hath known, 60 

Nor hath the vulture's eye looked upon it. 
The proud beast of prey hath not explored 

it, 
Nor hath passed over it the roaring lion. 
He putteth forth his hand to the flinty rock ; 
He overturneth mountains from their root ; 65 
He cutteth channels in the rocks ; 
And every precious thing his eye seeth. 
He bindeth up the streams from weeping ; 
And the hidden thing he bringeth forth to 

light. 
But Wisdom — where shall it be found ? 70 

Chap, xxviii. 4-12. 

55. A vivid picture of miners banging suspended from the 
precipice and working so far below as to be unseen. 

60. Man does indeed do wonders in exploring secret things, 
but there is a mystery far beyond him, — the mystery of wis- 
dom. 

68. From weeping, — that is, dripping. A miner's meta- 
phor, referring to the dripping of water into mines ; but well 
worth translating literally for its beauty. 

70. Though Job has freely criticised the conclusions of the 



XIX. JOB 279 

And where is the place of understanding ? 

Mortal man knoweth not the price of it ; 

Nor is it found in the land of the living. 

The deep saith, It is not in me ; 

The sea saith likewise, Not with me. 75 

Fine gold shall not be given for it, 

Nor shall silver be weighed as the exchange 

thereof ; 
It cannot be bought with the stamped gold of 

Ophir, 
With the precious onyx and the sapphire ; 
Gold and glass cannot be prized with it, so 

Nor is its exchange vases of fine gold. 
Corals and crystal are not to be named with 

it; 

And the possession of wisdom is above pearls. 
The topaz of Ethiopia cannot be bartered for 
it; 

Chap, xxviii. 12-19. 
Hebrew Wisdom, as brought forth by the friends, and per- 
haps even as quoted by himself (see section xvi. 74 sqq. 
note), yet of the true Wisdom he is still the loyal devotee. 
And as the Book of Job is the ripest product of the Hebrew 
Wisdom, so it is fitting that this chapter, its culmination and 
crown, should be devoted to the definition and praise of Wis- 
dom. 

78. The several Hebrew words for gold can be at best but 
awkwardly reproduced in English ; but some attempt at dis- 
crimination can be made, as here, by a recourse to the root- 
meanings. The " stamped gold " may refer to the peculiar 
mark put upon the gold of Ophir. 



280 THE BOOK OF JOB XIX. 

It cannot be put in the balance with gold of 
purest stamp. 85 

But Wisdom — whence then cometh it ? 
And where is the place of understanding ? — 
Since it is hid from the eyes of all living, 
And kept secret from the bird of the heaven ? 
Abaddon and Death say, 90 

'We have heard but a rumor of it with our 

ears/ 
God understandeth the way thereto, 
And He knoweth its place. 
For He looketh to the ends of the earth ; 
Under the whole heaven He seeth. 95 

When He gave the wind its weight, 
And meted out the waters in a measure, — *• 
When He gave a law to the rain, 
And a way to the flash of the thunder, — 
Then did He see, and declare it ; 100 

He established it, yea, He searched it out. 
And unto man He said, 

Chap, xxviii. 19-28. 

90. Abaddon, — or destruction. See section xviii. 10, 11, 
and note. 

96-99. Just as everything in nature is precisely determined, 
just as the rain has its law and the lightning its appointed 
direction (compare section xxv. 65, 66), so man has a law 
which is his wisdom, a way of life in which alone he finds his 
goal. 

102. Unto man, — whatever is the law of other creatures 
and forces, here is what alone concerns man. 



XIX. JOB 28l 

1 Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is Wisdom, 
And to shun evil is understanding/ " 

Chap, xxviii. 20-28. 

103. The Lord, — the original word is not the name Jeho- 
vah, but a word meaning more specifically Lord or Master, 
and perhaps especially appropriate here where as Creator He 
is viewed in relation to His great works. 

103, 104. These are just what Job started with, section i. 
2, 3 ; but they have reached a significance far beyond what 
they had then. He has tested and maintained them through 
the fiercest fires of struggle and affliction ; and not only has 
he proved them true, but he has defined as never before what 
it involves to fear God and shun evil, — even all that Satan 
doubted of him. Further, that very integrity has been to Job 
for insight into the deeps of things ; the faith that was born 
of his loyalty to what was holy and loving has indeed proved 
itself " understanding." This, then, is the highest expression 
of Job's vindication. 



XX 

JOB 

And Job took up his discourse yet further, and 
said : 



" Oh that I were as in months of old, 
As in the days when God watched over me ; 
When His lamp shone over my head, 
When by His light I walked through dark- 
ness ; 5 
As I was in mine autumn days, 
When the friendship of God was over my tent ; 
While yet the Almighty was with me, 
And round about me were my children ; 
When my steps were washed with cream, 10 

Chap. xxix. i-6. 

Having thus reached the culmination of his argument, Job 
here, in a retrospect, gathers up the threads of his past life 
and his present affliction, to present them as his vindication 
before God. 

Line 4. Compare section xi. 11, 12, and note. 

6. Mine autumn days, — days of ripeness and fruitfulness. 

7. The friendship of God, — literally, " the secret of God." 
Compare section xii. 38, and note. 



XX. JOB 283 

And the rock poured forth beside me streams 

of oil ; 
When I went forth to the gate by the city ; 
When I fixed my seat in the open place. 
Young men saw me, and withdrew themselves, 
And old men arose and stood up ; 15 

Princes checked their words, 
And laid their hand upon their mouth ; 
The voice of nobles was hushed, 
And their tongue cleaved to their palate. 

For the ear that heard blessed me ; 20 

And the eye that saw bare witness for me ; 
Because I had delivered the poor when he 

cried, 
The fatherless also, and him that had no 

helper. 
The blessing of the perishing came upon me, 
And I made the widow's heart sing for joy. 25 

Chap. xxix. 6-13. 

12. The city gate was the place where counsel was held 
and judgment pronounced. Job was eminent among the 
judges and wise men. 

13. The open place, near the gate, was more specifically the 
place of judgment and assembly. 

14-19. Marks of respect from various ages and ranks, in- 
dicating that Job had been recognized as " the greatest of all 
the sons of the East " (section i. 10). 

22-33. One of the most beautiful ancient portrayals of vir- 
tue, founded on a Christian ideal of love and mercy, rather 
than on the ideal of mere justice and law-keeping, such as 
afterward obtained among the Scribes and Pharisees. 



284 THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

I clothed myself in justice, and it clothed itself 

with me ; 
As a mantle and as a turban was my judg- 
ment. 
I was eyes to the blind, 
And feet to the lame was I ; 
A father was I to the needy, so 

And I searched out the cause of him that I 

knew not. 
And I brake the fangs of the wicked, 
And from his teeth I snatched the prey. 
And I said, ' I shall expire in my nest, 
And like the phoenix I shall multiply days. 35 
My root shall be spread out to the waters, 
And the dew shall lie all night on my branch. 
My glory shall be fresh within me, 
And my bow shall be renewed in my hand.' 

Unto me they gave ear, and waited ; 40 

And they were silent, listening for my counsel. 

Chap. xxix. 14-21. 

26. " Job clothed himself with righteousness, so that as a 
man he was lost in the justice that clothed him ; and justice 
clothed itself in him, — he on the other hand was justice be- 
come a person." — Davidson. 

31. Job's helpful spirit was not dependent on the attrac- 
tion of relatives and personal friends : he that was a stranger 
and had no natural claims fared just as well. 

35. The phosnix, — the original word is not certainly known, 
but seems to refer to that fabulous bird which is said to re- 
new its youth and attain a great age. 



XX. JOB 285 

After my words they spake not again ; 

For upon them my speech descended gently, 

And they waited for me as for the rain, 

And opened their mouths wide as for the latter 

rain. 45 

I laughed upon them when they were doubtful, 
And the light of my countenance they cast not 

down. 
I chose their way, and sat as their head ; 
And I dwelt as a king in the multitude, — 
As one that comforteth mourners. 50 

11. 

" And now they mock at me, — men younger 

in days than I, 
Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs 

of my flock. 
Nay, the strength of their hands — what is 

that to me ? 
Men to whom the vigor of age is lost ; 
Gaunt they are with want and hunger ; 55 

Chap. xxix. 22 — xxx. 3. 

42. They spake not again, — because the best and conclu- 
sive word had been spoken, and needed no supplement. 

45. Like young birds opening their mouths for food. 

51. The second division of Job's retrospect, here begin- 
ning, draws the sad contrast between that past and the joy- 
less present. 

54-60. Job describes the outlaws and vagabonds of a pas- 
toral country, whose refuge is the desert ; the same class, per- 



286 THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

Who gnaw the dry ground in the gloom of 
wild and wilderness ; 

Who pluck up the purslain by the sprouts, 

And the root of the broom is their bread. 

They are driven forth from society ; 

Men cry after them as after a thief. 60 

In the horror of the ravines must they dwell ; 

In holes of the earth, and among the crags. 

They bray among the thickets ; 

Under the nettles they herd together. 

Children of folly, yea, children of nameless 
men, — 65 

They are scourged out of the land. 

And now their song of derision am I be- 
come ; 

t Chap. xxx. 3-9. 

haps, which he has represented, section xvi. 41-50, as added 
to by the tyranny of the unscrupulous wicked around him. 

56. Wild and wilderness, — in this translation an attempt 
is made to reproduce something of the meaning and word- 
play effect of the original. 

67. Even such men, the very dregs of humanity, despise 
him because he is smitten of God. Even they, though under 
the ban of men, are ready to curse where God has set His 
mark of displeasure. Edmund Burke, speaking of the Cath- 
olic disabilities of his time, thus describes the disposition of 
men to persecute : " This desire of having some one below 
them descends to those who are the very lowest of all ; and 
a Protestant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by 
his share of the ruling Church, feels a pride in knowing it is 
by his generosity alone that the peer whose footman's instep 
he measures is able to keep his chaplain from a jail." 



XX. JOB 287 

And I am to them for a byword. 

They abhor me, they stand afar off from me ; 

And from my face they withhold not their 

spittle. 70 

Because He hath loosed my cord and bowed 

me down, 
They also have cast off the bridle before me. 
On my right hand they rise — a rabble ; 
They thrust my feet aside ; 
They cast up against me their destructive 

ways. 75 

They break up my path ; 
They help forward my hurt ; 
They — who themselves have no helper. 
As through a wide breach they come in ; 
Under the crash they roll themselves along ; — 
All overturned upon me — terrors — si 

They chase away mine honor like the wind ; 
And like a cloud my prosperity passeth. 

And now my soul within me is poured out ; 
Days of affliction take fast hold upon me. 85 

Chap. xxx. 9-16. 

71, 72. This it is that has caused Job's sensitive and loving 
heart the most poignant pain, — because men's treatment of 
him does not proceed from genuine heart-feeling, but from 
a conventional idea of what God's disposition is. Compare 
section iv. 43, note. 

75-80. The old figure of a host against him and a siege, 
only now associated with men rather than with God's unseen 
agencies. 



288 THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

Night pierceth out my bones away from me ; 
And my gnawing pains lie not down to rest. 
It is by great exertion that my garment is 

changed ; 
Like the collar of my tunic it clingeth about 

me. 
He hath cast me into the mire ; 90 

And I have taken the semblance of dust and 

ashes. 
I cry unto Thee, and Thou answerest me not ; 
I stand before Thee, and Thou beholdest me ; 
Yet Thou art become cruel unto me ; 
By the might of Thy hand Thou fetterest me. 95 
Thou liftest me up on the wind, where Thou 

makest me ride ; 
And Thou dissolvest me in the crash of the 

storm. 
For I know that Thou turnest me back to 

death, 



Chap. xxx. 17-23. 

86. A vivid description of his fearful emaciation. 

96, 97. The momentum of Job's vivid thought bears him 
onward into very bold imagery ; descriptive probably of the 
whirling, bewildering, perilous seeming spiritual experience 
that he is compelled to undergo. 

98. We will bear in mind that Job's greater calmness and 
hopefulness of late have not been due to release from death or 
suffering ; he still accepts the prospect of death, and draws 
near to it with (he assured hope of one who knows that his 
Redeemer liveth. 



XX. JOB 289 

To the house of assembly for all living. 

Surely, will not a man in ruins stretch out 
his hand ? 100 

Or in his calamity will he not cry out there- 
fore ? 

Have not / wept for him whose day was hard ? 

Hath not my soul grieved for the needy ? 

Yet I looked for good, and there came evil ; 

I waited for light, and there came darkness. 105 
My bowels boil, and are not still ; 

Days of anguish overtake me. 

I go about darkened, but not with the sun's 
glow; 

When I stand in the assembly I must cry out 
for pain. 

Brother am I to the jackals, 110 

And companion to the daughters of the ostrich. 

My blackened skin falleth from me, 

And my bones burn up with heat. 

Chap. xxx. 23-30. 

102-105. An appeal to the compassion that should exist 
above, corresponding to the like emotions of men. Such an- 
thropopathism is the only basis on which man can philoso- 
phize ; and the fact that Job can find in the darkness no 
counterpart to his highest self is the deepest cause of his per- 
plexity. 

106 sqq. All this paragraph contains observed symptoms 
and characteristics of elephantiasis. 

no. He is cast out of society, and so compelled to be like 
the beasts and birds of the desert. 



29O THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

So is my harp turned to mourning, 

And my pipe to the voice of them that weep, us 

in. 

" I made a covenant for mine eyes ; 
How then should I look upon a maid ? 
For what is the allotment of God from above, 
And the heritage of the Almighty from on high ? 
Is it not destruction to the wicked, 120 

And disaster to the workers of iniquity ? 
Is He not seeing my way, 
And numbering all my steps ? 

If I have walked with vanity, 
And my foot hath made haste to deceit, — 125 

Chap. xxx. 31 — xxxi. 5. 

116. This third division of the section, here beginning, 
contains Job's last and strongest asseverations of righteous- 
ness, a kind of solemn testimony which is to be lifted up be- 
fore God (11. 187-192,) to be seen and judged. 

1 1 8-1 21. Job alludes to Zophar's description of the doom 
of the wicked (see section xiii. 59, 60), the strongest that has 
yet been given, as defining, whether exaggeratedly or not, the 
stern warning by which he has kept himself from evil. 

122. Thus he contradicts Eliphaz's accusation, section xv. 
22-27; nay, it has been one element of his complaint that 
God has watched him, all too closely (sections iv. 100-104; 
viii. 106-109), and his longing to be laid away in the grave 
has been sharpened by the thought that the watching and 
numbering of steps would cease (section viii. 145-148). Yet 
such consciousness has determined his whole life. 

124, 125. The Hebrew manner of designating falseness of 
life and word ; compare Psalm xxiv. 4. 



XX. JOB 291 

Let Him weigh me in scales of righteousness, 
And let God know mine integrity ! — 
If my step hath turned from the way, 
And after mine eyes hath walked my heart, 
And a stain hath cleaved to my hands, — 130 
Let me sow, and another eat, 
And my sprouted grain — let it be rooted out. 
If my heart have been befooled by a woman, 
And I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door, 
Let my wife grind for another, 135 

And let others crouch over her ; 
For that were an infamous thing, — 
Yea, a crime that, for them that pass judg- 
ment. 
For it is a fire ; unto Abaddon it devoureth ; 
And all mine increase it would root out. 140 

If I have spurned the right of my servant 
and my handmaid, 
When they have had controversy with me, 
What then shall I do when God ariseth ? 
And when He visiteth, what shall I answer 
Him? 



Chap. xxxi. 6-14. 

126, 127. This parenthesis invites the strictest standard of 
judgment, as it accepts the severest penalty. 

135. Grinding was the representative occupation of the 
female slave, hence chosen as the mark that his wife is 
domiciled and degraded in another house. 

139. Unto Abaddon, — see section xviii. 10, II, note. 



292 THE BOOK. OF JOB XX. 

Did not He that made me in the womb make 
him ? 145 

And did not one Being fashion us in the 
belly ? 
If I have kept back the poor from their de- 
sire, 

And caused the widow's eyes to fail, 

And have eaten my morsel alone, 

And the fatherless hath not eaten thereof, — 150 

Nay, from my youth he grew up to me as to a 
father, 

And from my mothers womb I protected 
her ; — 

If I have seen one perishing for lack of cloth- 
ing, 

And the poor without covering, — 

Nay, rather his loins blessed me, 155 

And from the fleece of my lambs he warmed 
himself ; — 

Chap. xxxi. 15-20. 

145. Job retains the pure ideal of the oneness of all the 
race, — an ideal *which, it would seem, was fading in the gen- 
eral tendency of the time to separate classes ; compare sec- 
tion xvi. 36 sqq. note. 

151. The fact of Job's compassion and benevolence is so 
evident that he cannot finish bringing up the contemplation 
of its opposite even as a supposition; so again below, 11. 155, 
175. He doubtless has in mind Eliphaz's vague accusations, 
section xv. 10-17, which as he passes them in review are so 
palpably false that he thus breaks them off. 



XX. JOB 293 

If I have lifted up my hand against the father- 
less, 
When I saw mine ally in the gate, 
Let my shoulder fall from the shoulder-blade, 
And let mine arm be broken from its bone. 160 
For fear was upon me of calamity from God ; 
And because of His majesty I could not. 

If I have made gold my trust, 
And to the coined gold said, ' My confidence 
thou ; ' 164 

If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, 
And because my hand had gotten much ; — 
If when I saw the sunlight as it shone, 
And the moon walking in splendor, 
My heart was enticed in secret, 
And my hand kissed my mouth, no 

Chap. xxxi. 21-27. 

158. Mine ally, — another reminiscence of Eli phaz's accu- 
sation, section xv. 15, who represented that Job had neg- 
lected the needy because others, " the respected of person," 
were his closer favorites. 

161, 162. This same fear was mentioned as the constant 
attendant of his life, section ii. 51-54, where see note; and 
God's "majesty" has kept him from falseness and impelled 
him to rebuke his friends for time-serving, section viii. 73. 

163. Eliphaz's exhortation to Job, section xv. 46-48, has 
seemed to imply that Job was too fond of money; perhaps 
this is introduced in allusion and answer to that. 

167-170. A reference to the worship of the heavenly bodies, 
which before the Babylonian exile, as Jeremiah xliv. 17 sqq. 
indicates, was prevalent in Palestine. 



294 THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

This too were a crime for the judges, 
For so I had been false to God on high. 

If I have rejoiced at the calamity of him that 
hated me, 
And have exulted because evil befell him, — 
Nay, but I gave not my mouth to sin, U5 

By invoking a curse on his life ; 
In sooth, the men of my tent say, 
4 Who will show us one not filled with his 

flesh ? ' 
The stranger lodged never without ; 
I opened my doors to the wayfarer. iso 

If like Adam I have covered my transgres- 
sions, 
To hide mine iniquity in my bosom, 
Because I feared the great multitude, 
And the contempt of clans terrified me, 
So that I was silent, went not out of the 
gate, — 185 

. . . Oh that I had one to hear me ! — 

Chap. xxxi. 28-35. 

173-176. Here Job avows a higher ideal than Eliphaz has 
inculcated, for Eliphaz makes it a test of righteousness to 
rejoice at the calamity of the wicked ; see section xv. 36-39 ; 
also section iii. 49. Job is too merciful to rejoice at calamity. 

175. See note on 1. 151 above. 

181. Like Adam y — see Genesis iii. 8-1 1. 

186. At this point in his retrospect Job comes suddenly to 
realize that in no reasonable point has he failed. The sum 
of his life, so far as he can compute it, has come out right : 



XX. JOB 295 

Behold my sign ! let the Almighty answer 

me ! — 
And the charge that mine Adversary hath 

written ! 
Surely, I will lift it upon my shoulder ; 
I will bind it unto me like a crown ; 190 

I will declare unto Him the number of my 

steps ; 
I will draw near unto Him like a prince. 

If against me my land crieth out, 
And its furrows weep together ; — 
If I have eaten its strength without silver, 195 
And caused its tenant to pant out his life ; — 

Chap. xxxr. 36-39. 

and he is ready to present the account to God for judgment 
and award. 

187 sq. My sign . . . and the charge, — this record of an 
upright life, Job means. It is this record which constitutes 
his only offense ; and as it has been visited by punishment, 
it may be ironically named a " charge," an accusation, that in 
all things he has been " a man perfect and upright, one that 
feareth God and shunneth evil." 

189 sq. Of such a charge he has no fear. He is proud to 
come before God as a prince, on equal terms, as one who has 
a just cause and is sure of vindication. This, all told off, is 
the " number of his steps " which God has noted so narrowly 
(see 1. 123), the " bitter things" which God has written 
against him (see section viii. 103), no longer some unknown 
and fearful sin, but a life of honor and integrity. 

193-19S. It seems probable that this last paragraph is dis- 
placed, as the previous passage forms the fitting and tri- 
umphant close to Job's words. 



296 THE BOOK OF JOB XX. 

Instead of wheat let briars come up, 
And cockle instead of barley." 



THE WORDS OF JOB ARE ENDED. 

Chap. xxxi. 40. 

198. Cockle, — from the derivation of the word the more 
accurate translation would be stinkweed, which, however, it 
was not thought best to adopt in the text. 



XXI 

TRANSITION 

And these three men ceased to answer 
Job, because he was righteous in his own 
eyes. 

Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu, son 
of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram. 5 

Chap, xxxii. i, 2. 

So far as the friends are concerned, Job has proved him- 
self invincible : his righteousness, as he by the loftiest stan- 
dards defines righteousness, they cannot successfully impugn. 
The fact that he has silenced them, however, is not in itself 
conclusive. There still remains the question how the two 
parties stand in the absolute light ; and we have yet to learn 
the result alike of Job's impassioned appeals for judgment, 
and of the friends' confident assurance that they represent 
the mind of God. To bring in the friends' cause anew, and 
in its best and strongest statement, a fourth speaker, hitherto 
unmentioned, is here introduced. 

Line 4. Elihu's family and descent are given with much 
particularity, as if he were a veritable historical personage ; 
which of course we can neither affirm nor deny. Buz, who 
is mentioned as his ancestor, was a son of Nahor (Genesis 
xxii. 21), and the Buzites are evidently regarded by Jeremiah 
(xxv. 23), along with Tema, as an Arab tribe. 

5. The family of Ram. In 2 Chronicles xxii. 5, the Syri- 
ans, whose ordinary designation is Aramites, are called Ram- 



298 THE BOOK OF JOB XXI. 

Against Job was his wrath kindled, because 
he justified himself rather than God ; and 
against his three friends was his wrath kin- 
dled, because they found no answer where- 
with to condemn Job. Now Elihu had 10 
waited for Job with his words, because they 
were older than he ; and when Elihu saw 
that there was no answer in the mouth of 
the three men, his wrath was kindled. 

Chap, xxxir. 2-5. 

ites : this fact, together with the fact that the dialectic pecu- 
liarities of Elihu's speech are supposably Aramaean, would 
make it most probable that Elihu was an Aramaean ; yet the 
Buzite descent, mentioned in the foregoing note, is not 
clearly in favor of this. 

6. From Elihu's and the friends' point of view Job's justi- 
fication of himself would be of necessity condemnation of 
God ; though Job has merely maintained his ways (compare 
section viii. 81-84) regardless of logical consequences, and 
with increasing trust in God's goodness and love. 

9. It is not because the friends are wrong that Elihu is 
angry with them, but because their argument is not strong 
enough. His whole attitude is essentially one with theirs; 
he merely enters the lists as a better representative of their 
cause. 

12-14. Elihu has the fire and impatience of youth ; he is 
irritated because their words, moving cautiously in the lines 
of the ancient Wisdom, and keeping within the bounds of 
tradition, are not like a direct " answer " fitted to the present 
case. Speaking broadly, we may say, Elihu may be regarded 
as furnishing the test whether the Wisdom philosophy will 
have resources enough, in the hands of a new interpreter, to 
meet the strain which Job's case and his valiant self-defense 
impose upon it. 



XXII 

ELIHU 

And Elihu, son of Barachel the Buzite, an- 
swered and said : 



" Young am I in days, and ye are hoary ; 

Wherefore I shrank and was afraid 

To utter unto you what I know. 

I said, Days should speak, * 

And multitude of years should make known 
w T isdom. 

But truly, a spirit there is in mortal man, 

And a breath of the Almighty, that giveth un- 
derstanding. 

Chap, xxxii. 6-8. 

Line 2. Elihu's youth, while it explains his delay and dif- 
fidence, also determines the character of his thought, which 
is self-confident, constructive, unconventional, less bound by 
tradition and precedent than that of the friends. 

7, 8. Through this reflection he leaps from excessive hes- 
itation, which after all has a kind of egotism about it, to ex- 
cessive boldness, even wordiness. He says so much about 
his modesty that we begin to distrust it, — a clever bit of 
characterization on the part of the author. 



300 THE BOOK OF JOB XXII. 

Not the great alone are wise, 

Nor is it the aged that understand judgment. 10 

Therefore I say, Listen unto me ; 

I will utter knowledge, even I. 

Behold, I waited for your words ; 
I gave ear unto your reasonings, 
Until ye should search out what to say. is 

Yea, unto you I gave attention, 
And behold — none that convinced Job, 
None of you that answered his words. 
Lest ye should say, We have found wisdom, 
God will vanquish him, not man ; 20 

For not against me hath he directed words, 
Nor will I answer him with your arguments. 
They are dismayed, they do not answer more ; 
Words have fled away from them. 
And I waited — for they did not speak, — 25 

Chap, xxxii. 9-16. 

9, 10. This reflection that age is not necessarily a requisite 
to wisdom is no more than Job has already made ; see sec- 
tion viii. 25, 26. 

13 sqq. The present paragraph is made intentionally ver- 
bose, in order to set forth the character of the man. Con- 
sider how little is really said, and how many repetitions there 
are. 

20, 21. Elihu is so "stung by the splendor of a sudden 
thought " that his self-confidence overleaps itself ; he identi- 
fies his thoughts with God's thoughts, and regards himself as 
the mouthpiece of a divine communication. 

25-29. The idea of being the vehicle of absolute truth 
raises his conceit, and the pronoun / begins to play an im- 
portant part. 



XXII. ELIHU 301 

For they stood still, and did not answer more. 

I will answer, yea I, for my part ; 

I will utter knowledge, even I. 

For I am full of words ; 

The spirit in my breast constraineth me ; 30 

Behold, my heart is as wine that hath no vent, 

As new bottles that are ready to burst. 

I will speak, and it will be a relief to me ; 

I will open my lips and answer. 

Let me not now accept the person of men, 35 

Nor let me use flattery unto human kind ; 

For I know not how to flatter, — 

Else would my Maker soon take me away. 

11. 

"Yet hear now, O Job, my speech, 

And unto all my words give ear. 40 

Chap, xxxii. 16 — xxxiii. 1. 

32. Alas ! he mistakes tumidity for inspiration ; let not this 
fact, however, blind us to the real worth of his words. The 
reader does not need to be reminded here that Elihu has in 
mind the skin-bottles of the East. 

35. Elihu prides himself on his impartiality and his original 
views. Job accused the friends of special pleading for God 
(see section viii. 65-68), and perhaps Elihu alludes to that; 
but he turns it around. He will not accept either Job's per- 
son or the person of the friends. Eliphaz's wisdom, Bildad's 
learning, Zophar's eloquence, are nothing except as they em- 
body reason and truth. 

38. My Maker, — this designation of God is peculiar to 
Elihu ; see sections xxiv. 18 ; xxv. 5. 



302 THE BOOK OF JOB XXII. 

Behold now, I have opened my mouth ; 

My tongue hath spoken in my palate. 

The uprightness of my heart are these words 
of mine, 

And my lips shall speak their knowledge sin- 
cerely. 

The spirit of God hath made me ; 45 

And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life. 

If thou art able, answer me ; 

Set words in array before me, take thy stand. 

Behold, I, according to thy word, stand for 
God ; 

Out of clay am I moulded, also I ; 50 

Behold my terror shall not unman thee, 

Nor will my burden upon thee be heavy. 

Chap, xxxiit. 2-7. 

45, 46. By these same characteristics he has identified him- 
self, 11. 7, 8, with mankind ; here he simply reminds Job that 
it is as a man that he represents the mind of God. This he 
says in preparation for the assumption that he is about to 
make. 

49. A reference to Job's wish for a Daysman, section vi. 
62-69. Elihu is so sure of knowing God's mind that he as- 
sumes to fulfill Job's wish ; as a man he will stand between 
Job and God, and mitigate the divine terrors. This of course 
puts the whole idea of a Daysman on a lower plane, and en- 
tirely ignores the conquering faith by which Job found what 
he sought. Job is beyond the need of what Elihu can offer ; 
while Elihu is blind to the higher reaches of the Messianic 
idea with which Job has been comforted. 



XXII. ELIHU 303 



III. 

" Verily, thou hast said in mine ears, 
And I have heard the voice of thy words : 
1 Pure am I, without transgression ; 55 

Clean am I, and there is no iniquity in me. 
Behold, He findeth occasions against me ; 
He counteth me for His enemy ; 
He putteth my feet in the stocks ; 
He marketh all my paths/ eo 

Behold, in this, I answer thee, thou art not 
just; 
For greater is God than mortal man. 
Why makest thou complaint against Him, 
That He answereth thee by no word of His ? 

Chap, xxxiii. 8-13. 

55, 56. Compare Job's words, sections vi. 40, 84; viii. 81, 
82 ; x. 39, 40 ; xii. 59 (see note). The assertions of inno- 
cence that Job has made in reference to his excess of punish- 
ment Eiihu takes as having been made in the absolute sense. 

57. Not an exact quotation, but reproducing the sense of 
such passages as section vi. 96-107. 

58. Compare section xii. 21. 

59. 60. Compare section viii. 105, 106. 

62. That is, enough greater to have a transcendent stan- 
dard of judgment which man cannot discover. We have no 
business, therefore, to say either what is human righteousness 
or what is divine punishment. 

64. This has been a very poignant element of Job's bewil- 
derment ; in fact, he has condensed his whole longing into a 
desire for an answer. Elihu refers more immediately, per- 



304 THE BOOK OF JOB XXII. 

For God speaketh — once, 65 

Yea, twice, while man regardeth it not : 
In dream, in vision of the night, 
When falleth deep sleep upon men, 
In slumberings upon the bed, 
Then uncovereth He the ear of men, 70 

And setteth a seal upon the warning, 
To make man. put away his evil deed, 
And to hide pride from the strong man ; 
To keep back his soul from the pit, 
And his life from passing by the dart. 75 

He is chastened also with anguish upon his 
bed, 

Chap, xxxiii. 14-19. 

haps, to Job's words, section xx. 92 ; compare also section xii. 
12, 13. 

67. The first way in which God answers. Elihu means 
dreams in general, with perhaps a reference to Eliphaz's 
vision, section iii. 22-32, which was well utilized for instruc- 
tion, and to Job's terrifying visions, section iv. 90, 91, in which 
Job has found no meaning. 

7 1 . Setteth a seal, — that is, gives it some mark or sign 
whereby it can be interpreted as from God. 

74. The pit, — a favorite expression of Elihu's, occurring 
no fewer than five times in the present section. By it he 
seems to mean, not necessarily death, but that extreme depth 
of trial and affliction which would issue in death were it not 
for deliverance. 

75. The dart is the dart of Death, as the instrument of 
retribution. 

76. The second means whereby God speaks, — affliction. 
This is a direct reference to Job's suffering, which Elihu in- 



XXII. ELIHU 305 

And the strife of his bones is unceasing ; 

And his life abhorreth bread, 

And his soul dainty meat ; 

His flesh consumeth away, out of sight, so 

And laid bare are his bones, that before were 

not seen ; 
And his soul draweth near to the pit, 
And his life to the Destroying Ones. 

IV. 

u If then there be with him a messenger, 

An interpreter, one of a thousand, 85 

To show unto man what is right for him, — 

Chap, xxxiii. 19-23. 

terprets, not as punishment, but as a vehicle of instruction and 
warning. Some of the main features of Job's disease are 
specified in Elihu's description, so that the reference may be 
made plain. 

83. The Destroying Ones, — angels or agencies of fate ; 
perhaps the mysterious " they n to which Job has several 
times referred. 

84. Here is introduced Elihu's theory of the way in which 
these messages of God are to be made intelligible. Some 
messenger is needed to trace God's mind and will through 
the dream and the affliction. The word translated literally 
messenger is the same word used to designate angel ; but in 
the present case Elihu, who carefully ignores the supernat- 
ural, seems to mean himself, as a representative of God. 
This is quite in accordance with his assumption of the Days- 
man's office, 11. 49-52, and with his general exalted opinion 
of himself. He has arrived just in time to set things right. 

85. One of a thousand, — that is, one exceptionally quali- 



306 THE BOOK OF JOB XX1L 

So doth He show grace, and say, 

1 Deliver him from going down to the pit ; 

I have found a ransom/ 

Fresher than a child's then cometh his 
flesh ; 90 

He returneth to the days of his young vigor. 

He prayeth unto God, who accepteth him, 

And maketh him see His face with joy, 

And giveth back to the mortal his righteous- 
ness. 

Then he singeth before men, and saith : 95 

* I sinned, and perverted the right, 

Yet retribution came not upon me. 

He hath delivered my soul from going to the 
pit, 

And my life shall behold the light.' 

Chap, xxxiii. 24-28. 

fied, by gifts and by the divine authorization that lies in his 
endowments. 

90-94. A prophecy of what actually took place, but not by 
Elihu's intercession nor recognizing his principles. 

96 sqq. Elihu has here a full-fledged theory of atonement, 
— a theory which, like his Messiah-theory, is thoroughly 
rationalistic. There is no supernatural element in it, except 
what inheres in his theory of the Daysman. Observe also its 
crudeness : it contemplates merely release from the punish- 
ment of sin, and its highest ideal is restoration to the welfare 
of this life. In this respect it moves on a much lower plane 
than does Job, with his confidence in a Redeemer and his 
hopeful readiness to meet death ; while it is also thoroughly 
identical with the other friends' idea of blessing. 



XXII. ELIHU 307 

Lo, all these things vvorketh God, 100 

Twice, three times, with man ; 
To bring back his soul from the pit, 
To enlighten him with the light of life. 

v. 

" Attend then, O Job, give ear unto me ; 

Keep thou silence, and I will speak. 105 

If there are words to be said, answer me ; 

Speak, for I desire to justify thee. 

If not, listen unto me thou ; 

Be silent, and I will teach thee wisdom." 

Chap, xxxiii. 29-33. 

1 01. Twice, three times, — a climax on 11. 65, 66, with per- 
haps an allusion to Elihu's intercession as messenger and in- 
terpreter, as the third way of God's working with man. 



XXIII 

ELIHU 

And Elihu answered further, and said : 

" Hear, O wise men, my words, 

And men of knowledge, give ear unto me. 

For the ear testeth words, 

As the palate tasteth what is eaten. s 

Let us choose to ourselves judgment ; 

Let us know between us what is good 

i. 

" For Job saith, € I am righteous, 
And God hath taken away my right. 

Chap, xxxiv. 1-5. 

Line 2. This section is addressed to the friends, with the 
exception of a short diversion, 11. 31-34, in which Job is 
brought into the audience with them. 

4, 5. This is evidently a well-known Wisdom maxim; Job 
has already quoted it, section viii. 23, 24, as containing a self- 
evident truth. 

6, 7. Elihu's object in addressing the friends is to find 
common ground with them, on which he can admonish Job. 
He evidently regards himself as the champion of the friends' 
cause. 

8-1 t. These words, though (with the exception of 1. 9, see 



XXIII. ELIHU 309 

Against my right I am made to lie ; 10 

Incurable is my wound, yet without crime of 

mine/ 
Who is a mighty man like Job ? — 
Who drinketh in scorning like water, 
Who consorteth with workers of iniquity, 
And walketh with men of wickedness. 15 

For he hath said it availeth not a man, 
That he should delight himself with God. 

Therefore, men of understanding, hear me : 
Far be it — far be God from wickedness, 
And the Almighty from iniquity. 20 

For the work of man will He requite unto him, 
And make every man find according to his way. 
Yea, verily, God will not do wickedly, 

Chap, xxxiv. 6-12. 

section xix. 2) not literally quoted, are a not unfair represen- 
tation of the general tenor of Job's complaint. 

13-17. This passage gives Elihu's idea of the logical out- 
come of Job's position. As Eliphaz has -already complained 
(see section ix. 6, 7), it seems to break down the barriers 
between devoutness and scorn, and thus to make Job a com- 
panion of wicked men. Job has indeed disclaimed sympathy 
with wickedness (section xiv. 30, 31), and this same sneer, 
" What availeth ? " he has attributed to them (section xiv. 
26-29) 5 but Elihu ignores this fact, because the whole logic 
of Job's complaint seems to him to belie it. 

18 sqq. In this paragraph Elihu occupies the friends' 
ground of indiscriminate justification of God; and for this he 
urges only the reason of God's power, as if might made right 
This of course is just the idea that Job has contested. 



3IO THE BOOK OF JOB XXIII. 

Nor will the Almighty pervert judgment. 
Who laid upon Him the charge of the earth, 2.5 
And who disposed the whole world ? 
If He should set His heart upon Himself, 
And gather unto Himself His spirit and His 

breath, — 
All flesh would gasp out its life together, 
And man would return to dust. 30 

11. 

" Oh, if thou wilt understand then, hear this ; 
Give ear to the voice of my words. 
Shall even a hater of right have dominion ? 
And wilt thou condemn the Just, the Mighty ? — 
Who saith to a king, Thou worthless ! 35 

To nobles, Thou wicked one ! 
Who regardeth not the face of princes, 
Nor heedeth the rich before the poor ; 
For the work of His hands they are, all of 
them. 

Chap, xxxiv. 12-19. 

33, 34. A hater of right, — so Job appears to Elihu. Job 
has condemned wrong wherever he saw it, even in God ; but 
when it came to judging God, Elihu, who blindly identified 
His justice and His might, regards Job's words as condemning 
the right itself. 

35 sqq. This paragraph merely amplifies the argument 
outlined in 11. 25-30. The statements are true enough ; but 
they ascribe to God nothing higher than arbitrary power. 



XXIII. ELIHU 311 

In a moment they die ; and at midnight, 40 

The people rise in tumult, and rush to and fro ; 

And the mighty is removed — yet not with 
hands. 

For His eyes are on the ways of each man, 

And all his goings doth He see. 

There is no darkness, and there is no shadow 
of death, 45 

Where workers of iniquity may hide them- 
selves. 

For He needeth not to set thought on a man 
the second time, 

That he should come to God in judgment. 

He breaketh in pieces mighty men, inscruta- 
bly, 

And setteth up others in their stead. 50 

Therefore He taketh note of their works, 

And He overturneth in the night, and they 
are crushed. 

He beateth them as He beateth the wicked, 

In the place where all may see ; 

Because they have turned back from Him, 55 

Chap, xxxiv. 20-27. 

40-42. Description of the national disturbance occasioned 
by the death of a prince. 

46. Because the first stroke does the work thoroughly ; com- 
pare Milton, Lycidas, 11. 130, 131 : — 

" But that two-handed engine at the door 
Stands ready to smite once and smite no more." 



312 THE BOOK OF JOB XXIII. 

And all His ways they have heeded not ; 
That they may bring before Him the cry of 

the poor ; 
And the cry of the afflicted He will hear. 
When He giveth quietness, who shall dis- 
turb ? 
When He hideth His face, who shall spy Him 

OUt ? 60 

Be it with nation, or with man, He dealeth 

alike ; 
That the godless man may not bear rule, 
Nor they that ensnare the people. 



in. 

(< For oh, had he but said unto God, 

* I bear it — I will not offend — 65 

Beyond what I see, teach me Thou, — 

If I have wrought iniquity, I will no more ! ' . . . 

Chap, xxxiv. 27-32. 

57. The end of God's way, after all, is righteousness and 
mercy; herein the parties are not in dispute, though Job does 
not work out the problem so clearly, nor does he pass so 
lightly as do the friends over such disturbing elements as are 
suggested in 11. 62, 63. 

64. Addressed to the friends again. 

65 sqq. What Elihu deprecates here is Job's hardness of 
tone and lack of humility in asserting his right. He ought to 
have been more ready to confess ignorance and take the atti- 
tude of a sinner. 



XXIII. ELIHU 313 

Shall He requite on thine own terms, and say, 
' Whether thou spurnest, whether thou choosest, 
Be it thou, and not I, 70 

And, what thou knowest, speak ' ? 

Men of understanding will say to me, 
And the strong wise man, hearkening to me ; 
1 It is not in wisdom that Job hath spoken, 
Nor have his words been in insight. 75 

Would that Job might be tried to the utmost, 
Because of his answers after the manner of 

wicked men ; 
For he addeth outrage to his sin ; 
He clappeth his hands among us, 
And multiplieth words against God/ " so 

Chap, xxxiv. 33-37. 

68-71. This passage is one of the most obscure in the 
poem ; the above seems to me its most probable meaning. 
I take it as Elihu's way of turning back upon himself Job's 
general arrogance toward God, which is to the friends the 
most offensive feature of Job's behavior. 

73. The wise ma?t, — it is in the interests of wisdom and 
in the dialect of the " wise men " that Elihu is speaking. 

76 sqq. Although Elihu is ordinarily very courteous in ad- 
dressing Job, yet here he brings forth the harshest seeming 
judgment that has been pronounced. We will remember, 
however, that he regards Job's affliction merely as a trial 
wherein the latter is to be brought to hear and accept an in- 
terpreter, through whom he is to be restored (section xxii. 
84-89). What he wishes here, therefore, is that Job's arro- 
gance, desperate as it is, may have a desperate enough rem- 
edy to cure it. It is not Job's death that he is wishing; it is 
the heroic treatment which will effectually humble him. 



XXIV 

ELIHU 

Again Elihu answered, and said 



" Countest thou this for judgment, 

When thou sayest, ' My justice is more than 

God's'? — 
For thou sayest, What advantage hast thou ? — 
* What am I profited more than by my sin ? ' 5 
I will answer thee words, 
And thy companions with thee. 

Look unto the heavens, and see, 
And survey the skies — high above thee they 
are, — ■ 

Chap. xxxv. 1-5. 

Line 2. For judgment^ — that is, for a true discrimination 
of things, a right estimate of where justice lies between him 
and God. 

3. Thou sayest, — that is, virtually. From the friends' 
point of view Job's complaint has involved such assertion. 

7. Elihu's answer in this section is directed both to Job 
and the friends. It deals more with general truths, which it 
is of interest for all to know, than with Job's particular case. 

8-15. To Elihu and the friends the heavens are the symbol 



XXIV. ELIHU 315 

If thou sinnest, what workest thou against 
Him ? 10 

And if thy transgressions be multiplied, what 
doest thou to Him ? 

If thou art righteous, what givest thou Him ? 

Or what receiveth He from thy hand ? 

It is to man such as thou that thy wickedness 
cometh, 

And to the son of man thy righteousness. 15 

11. 

" From the multitude of the oppressed men cry 

out ; 
They groan because of the arm of the mighty. 
Yet no one saith, ■ Where is God my Maker, 
Who giveth songs in the night ; — 

Chap. xxxv. 6-10. 

of God's inaccessible distance. Eliphaz, in section xv. 22-27, 
has used this same feeling of God's remoteness to account 
for Job's imputed sin ; and indeed he has brought forth in 
outline, and without application, this argument of Elihu's, 
section xv. 2-5. Elihu seems to adduce it here in order to 
rebuke Job for trying to judge God on human standards of 
justice and make Him like man. God is not one to be bene- 
fited or defrauded by man's little doings ; hence Job's whole 
implied demand of reciprocal relations between God and 
man is a presumption. 

16, 17. These two lines bring up, in very brief form, Job's 
complaint of the oppression of the poor by the wicked, which 
Elihu answers in his own way. 

18-25. Elihu's explanation of this problem is similar to his 



3l6 THE BOOK OF JOB XXIV. 

Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the 

earth, 20 

And more than the fowls of heaven maketh us 

wise ? ' 
Therefore it is He heareth not, 
When they cry because of the pride of the 

wicked. 
For surely, vanity will not God hear, 
Nor will the Almighty regard it. 25 

Yet no less when thou sayest thou discernest 

Him not, 
The cause is before Him : wait thou for Him. 
And now, because He visiteth not in His 

anger, 
And doth not strictly regard transgression, — 
Job openeth his mouth in vanity, 30 

And multiplieth words without knowledge." 

Chap. xxxv. 11-16. 

explanation of Job's affliction. When the poor are op- 
pressed, it is their discipline, to draw them to God ; if they 
fail to learn the lesson, their cry for help is vain. 

20 sq. This question on the part of the poor implies doubt 
of any Power to give them more than a brutish life, and is an 
excuse for cherishing a lower existence than they are made 
for. 

28-31. The upshot of Elihu's criticism in this section 
seems to be that Job is wrong in bringing God to the bar of 
justice and right, because it leaves God's failure to punish 
the wicked unexplained. Elihu is trying to justify God in all 
His ways, and to make His dark dealings clear too ; and be- 
cause Job honestly calls them insoluble, Job's words are 
vanity. 



XXV 

ELIHU 

And Elihu continued, and said : 

" Wait for me a little, and I will show thee ; 

For there are yet words for God. 

I will fetch my knowledge from afar, 

And to my Maker will I ascribe justice ; 5 

For of a surety my words are no lie ; — 

It is the Perfect in knowledge that is with thee. 



" Behold, God is mighty, yet despiseth not, — 
Is mighty in strength of understanding. 

Chap, xxxvi. 1-5. 

In the present section Elihu elaborates into a general doc- 
trine that idea of submission which he has inculcated upon 
Job. 

Line 5. Elihu is much concerned to "justify the ways of 
God to man ; " this in special reference to Job, whose affir- 
mations of innocence it was, with the sequent implication of 
God's injustice to him, that kindled his wrath ; section xxi. 

7. The Perfect in Knowledge, — by this term Elihu identi- 
fies his thoughts with the mind of God ; he is as confident of 
his doctrine as if it were a veritable oracle. A delicate touch of 
the author, — to make Elihu's conceit prepare his humiliation. 



318 THE BOOK OF JOB XXV. 

He will not let the wicked live ; 10 

And justice will He give to the afflicted. 

He withdraweth not His eyes from the right- 
eous ; 

But with kings upon the throne 

He maketh them sit for ever, and they are 
exalted. 

And if, bound in fetters, 15 

They be taken in toils of affliction, 

And He showeth them their deed, 

And their transgressions, that they have been 
overweening, 

And openeth their ear to discipline, 

And speaketh, that they turn back from 
iniquity, — 20 

Chap, xxxvi. 6-10. 

10, 11. These two lines comprise Elihu's doctrine, which is 
the general Wisdom doctrine, of God's final purpose. As it 
contemplates no adjustment of things beyond this life, it is 
merely the doctrine that Job has called in doubt, nor does it 
make any advance on what the friends have maintained. 

15. But here begins Elihu's own resolution of the doctrine. 
The statement of the problem he draws from Job's case, 
which embodies the difficulty in point. Affliction, he says, is 
intended by God to produce confession of sin and a docile, 
obedient spirit, responsive to discipline. This too is quite 
consistent with the friends' system ; for, as in their view man 
is of necessity corrupt, he can never fail to have sins to confess. 
And in general it contains a noble and helpful truth. But it 
falls short of the case of Job, who by the hypothesis is pure 
and upright, and who finds, both in his affliction and in the 
world, evils out of all proportion to any reasonable purpose 



XXV. ELIHU 319 

If then they hearken, and be obedient, 

They shall fill out their days in good, 

And their years in pleasantness. 

And if they hearken not, they shall perish by 
the dart, 

And they shall expire without knowledge. 25 

Also the godless of heart, that cherish wrath, 

That cry not out when He bindeth them, — 

Their soul dieth in youth, 

And their life is with the obscene. 

He delivereth the afflicted by his affliction, 30 

And openeth, by suffering, their ear ; 

And thee also He lureth from the jaws of dis- 
tress, 

Unto a broad place, where there is no strait- 
ness ; 

And the furnishing of thy table shall be full of 
fatness. 

Chap, xxxvi. 11-16. 

of justice or discipline. It still fails to answer the question, 
What of the man who, perfect in integrity and honest with 
himself, will not confess to a sin that he does not feel ? 

21-25. The end that Elihu contemplates is either restora- 
tion or utter ruin in death ; his thoughts are bounded by this 
life, and leave no room for a solution beyond. 

24. The dart, — Elihu's chosen symbol of God's vengeance 
and retribution ; see section xxii. 75. 

26-29. The same doctrine applied to the afflicted wicked ; 
a repetition, essentially, of what Elihu has propounded, sec- 
tion xxiv. 16-25. 

32. And thee also, — the thought gracefully turned from the 



320 THE BOOK OF JOB XXV. 

But hast thou filled the judgment of the 
wicked, 35 

Judgment and justice shall lay hold of thee. 

For beware lest anger stir thee up against the 
stroke, 

And abundance of ransom shall not deliver 
thee. 

Shall then thy cry set thee forth out of distress, 

And all the resources of wealth ? 40 

Sigh not thou for the night, 

When the nations go up from their place. 

Keep thyself, lest thou turn unto iniquity ; 

For thereto thou inclinest more than to afflic- 
tion. 

11. 
" Behold, God worketh loftily in His power ; 45 

Chap, xxxvi. 17-22. 

general to Job, by an idiom similar to section viii. 115, where 
see note. 

37. It is Job's " anger " (so they interpret his clear-eyed 
indignation) which is the greatest difficulty both to Elihu and 
to the friends ; compare section iii. 46. 

41. This seems to refer to Job's wish for death, with its 
rest and its dark oblivion. 

44. Elihu strikes Job's balance as toward iniquity. He 
does not accuse him directly of sin, as do the friends ; but in 
thus judging Job's inclination of spirit he is at one with them : 
he is as blind as they are to the real determination toward God 
which underlies all Job's earnest remonstrances and all his 
achievements of faith. 

45. At this point, it seems most reasonable to conclude, 



XXV. ELIHU 321 

Who is a teacher like unto Him ? 
Who hath laid upon Him His way ? 
And who saith, Thou hast done iniquity ? 
Take heed that thou magnify His work, 
Which men celebrate in song. 50 

All mankind gaze wonderingly thereon ; 
Mortal man beholdeth it from afar. 

Behold, God is exalted, and we know Him 
not ; 
The number of His years is unsearchable. 
For He draweth up the water-drops, 55 

Chap, xxxvi. 22-27. 

Elihu's attention is turned to the glory of God, perhaps by 
the impressiveness of a distant storm, which he employs as 
furnishing material for a didactic discourse. 

47-50. The same view of God that Elihu has taken before ; 
see section xxiii. 25 sq. A true enough view in itself ; but it 
betrays, whether intentionally or not, the radical discordance 
between the friends and Job. The truth of God's resistless 
power over the world Job himself, far from disputing, affirms 
with all emphasis, as a point whereon he accepts their doc- 
trine; see section viii. 15-56. But that, because God is 
mighty, all His dealings, whatever their mysterious incon- 
sistency, must be called justice, — this, Job is too honest to 
avow, and the disposition to avow it blindly and indiscrimi- 
nately, as Elihu is now doing, Job has censured in the friends, 
as the disposition to be special pleaders for God ; see section 
viii. 63-76. So this didactic discourse of Elihu's, true and 
eloquent though it is, really opens the whole issue between 
the friends and Job, and prepares the two parties to appear 
before the God of the whirlwind in their contrasted spiritual 
attitudes. 

55. With this line Elihu begins to recognize the storm as 



322 THE BOOK OF JOB XXV. 

And they distil rain in place of the mist ; 

Which then the skies pour down, 

And drop upon men abundantly. 

Yea, is there that understandeth the spread- 

ings of the cloud, 
The crashings of His pavilion ? 60 

Behold, He spreadeth thereon His light, 
And the roots of the sea He covereth up ; 
For by them He judgeth the nations ; 
He giveth food in abundance. 
Over both hands He wrappeth lightning, 65 
And giveth it command where to strike. 
His thunder-cry maketh report thereof, 
The herd also, of the flame that ascendeth. 
Yea, at this my heart trembleth, 
And shuddereth from its place. io 

Hear ye, oh, hear the roar of His voice, 
And the rumbling that goeth forth from His 

mouth. 

Chap, xxxvi. 27 — xxxvn. 2. 

the occasion of his discourse ; and while the storm is yet dis- 
tant he can, in a leisurely manner, draw other objects into his 
disquisition, such as the sea, 1. 62, snow and ice, 11. 80, 88. 

63. God judges the nations, Elihu says, by clouds and rain, 
which indicate His will by giving or withholding their sup- 
ply. 

6S. This seems to refer to the perturbation of beasts in a 
thunder-storm, or at the approach of a hurricane. 

69-72. These lines seem to indicate definitely the approach 
of the storm, at which he is disturbed, but not yet enough to 
intermit his discourse. 



XXV. ELIHU 323 

Under all the heavens He sendeth it forth, 
And His lightning to the edges of the earth. 
After it resoundeth a voice, — 75 

He thundereth with the voice of His majesty, 
Nor doth He stay them when His voice is 

heard. 
God thundereth with His voice marvelously, 
Doing great things, and we comprehend Him 

not. 
For to the snow He saith, Be thou upon 

the earth, so 

And the rain -flood, yea, the flood of His 

mighty rains. 
On the hand of every man He setteth a seal, 
That all mortals whom He hath made may 

know. 
And the beast goeth into his covert, 
And in his lair abideth. 85 

Out of His chamber cometh the hurricane, 

Chap, xxxvii. 3-9. 

J J. Nor doth He stay them, — the reference of them is ob- 
scure ; perhaps it means the lightnings. 

80 sqq. In this paragraph the signs of the coming whirl- 
wind, or hurricane, become more definite; which, so long as 
he can look upon them calmly, Elihu associates didactically 
with snow and ice. 

82. God setteth a seal on men's hands ; that is, in the winter 
and in the rainy season causes them to suspend work and 
activity, going into their houses as the beasts go into their 
coverts. 



324 THE BOOK OF JOB XXV. 

And cold from the cloud-dispersers. 
From the breath of God ice is given ; 
And the broadness of the waters is straitened. 
Also He loadeth the cloud with moisture; 90 
He spreadeth the lightning-cloud abroad ; 
And at His guidance it turneth itself about, 
To do all that He commandeth it, 
On the face of the terrestrial world ; 
Whether for a scourge, or for the land, — 95 
If for mercy He causeth it to come. 

in. 

" Give ear unto this, O Job ; 

Stand, and ponder the marvelous things of 

God. 
Knowest thou how God layeth command upon 

them, 
And maketh shine forth the light of His 

cloud ? 100 

Knowest thou the poisings of the thick cloud, 
The wonders of the Perfect in knowledge ? — 

Chap, xxxvii. 9-16. 

87. The cloud-dispersers, — the clear cold winds that drive 
away the clouds and leave the heavens serene. 

97 sqq. Elihu's didactic spirit rises with the oncoming of 
the storm, until it reaches its highest pitch of patronizing wis- 
dom, even to the extent of naming again (1. 102) the Perfect 
in knowledge, with whom, as he has previously identified his 
thought (1. 7), he now identifies the portents and marvels of 
the storm. 



XXV. ELIHU 325 

Thou whose garments are hot, 

Because from the south the earth lieth sultry 

still, — 
Canst thou spread out with Him the skies, 105 
Firm, as a molten mirror ? 
. . . Oh teach us what we may say to Him ! 
We cannot order it — it groweth so dark . . . 
Hath one told Him that I am speaking ? . . . 
Or hath a man said . . . for he shall be 

swallowed up ! no 

And now they no longer see the light, — 
That splendor in the skies, 
For a wind hath passed, and scattered them. 
. . . From the north a golden glory cometh ! . . . 

Chap, xxxvii. 17-22. 

103, 104. One sign of the whirlwind, which is preceded by 
sultry heat and stillness. 

106. Another sign, — the peculiar metallic appearance of 
the sky. 

107. At this point, as it would seem, the storm bursts upon 
them, and with such exceptional features that Elihu must 
regard it as betokening the immediate presence of Jehovah. 
For this he is not prepared, nor has any of his discourse 
manifested either desire for or conception of such a thing. 
His succeeding words, accordingly, are confused and incoher- 
ent, indicating a vague terror of impending destruction. 

in. With the passing of the mysterious light which accom- 
panied the storm, Elihu's spirit rebounds, and in comparative 
calm he is resuming his disquisition. 

114. From the north, — a new quarter of the heavens (com- 
pare 1. 104), and with manifestations wholly portentous. — 



326 THE BOOK OF JOB XXV. 

Oh, with God is terrible majesty ! 115 

The Almighty — we have not found Him out ; 
Vast in power, and in judgment, 
And in abundance of righteousness ; — 
He will not afflict ; 

Therefore do men fear Him ; 120 

He regardeth not any wise in their own con- 
ceit." 

Chap, xxxvii. 22-24. 

A golden glory , — literally, gold ; but in this connection it 
can hardly refer to anything but the exceptionally splendid 
light. 

116. At which Elihu begins to retract his pretensions, and 
in a kind of wheedling terror to bring God's mercies to 
mind, as if in a confused attempt thereby to turn away the 
wrath that seems so imminent. Quite in contrast to the self- 
respecting boldness of Job when he took his life in his hand 
(section viii. 80), in order to speak out to God's face what 
was in him. 

121. Wise in their own conceit, — literally, wise of heart. 
Thus he characterizes himself, making thereby "abject confes- 
sion of the futile pretensions of his wisdom. 

This is the last of Elihu. He is self-judged. Though he 
has said many noble things, and represented the highest and 
the truest that the friends could bring forth from the treas- 
ures of their Wisdom, yet, because of its unspiritual and 
essentially selfish basis in their character, it does not enable 
them to stand before the searching light of God's immediate 
presence. A God who is undesired is unbearable ; it is only 
aspiring love and purity of heart that can endure His face. 



XXVI 

THE LORD 

And the Lord answered Job out of the whirl- 
wind, and said : 

" Who is this, darkening counsel 

With words, — but without knowledge ? 

Gird up thy loins now, like a strong man, 
And I will ask thee ; and inform Me thou. 5 

Chap, xxxviii. 1-3. 

The first words from the whirlwind dismiss* Elihu abruptly 
with a judgment just adapted to his pretensions. Full of 
words he confessedly has been (section xxii. 29) ; but to set 
up as the mouthpiece of the Perfect in knowledge (section 
xxv. 7) is a presumption too great to pass unrebuked. 
" Without knowledge," — thus on Elihu the Divine verdict is 
passed. 

Not so with Job. He is left rather to judge himself. From 
his impregnable citadel of integrity he has looked into the 
world of God's mysterious dealings, and while blinking none 
of its difficulties his faith has imaged a God who is his Friend 
and the Friend of righteousness. One difficulty remained, 
however, which caused him dismay (section xvi. 24-33) : the 
sight of God's changeless, inexorable, inscrutable work in the 
world, where wicked and righteous live together in the same 
apparently undiscriminating government. To this problem 
we may regard the Lord's discourse as addressed ; not by 



328 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVI. 

I. 

" Where wast thou, when I laid the founda- 
tions of the earth ? 

Declare, if by knowledge thou understandest : 

Who set its measurements, so thou knowest ; 

Or who stretched the line over it ? 

On what were its piers deep-laid, 10 

Or who placed its corner-stone, — 

When the morning-stars sang together, 

And all the sons of God shouted for joy ? 
Who shut up the sea with doors, 

When it brake forth — issued from the 
womb, — 15 

When I made cloud its garment, 

Chap, xxxviii. 4-9. 

way of a narrow answer why, but rather, by passing in re- 
view before Job the greatness and variety of created things, 
it raises him to a point where he has a broader horizon, and 
Qan better judge of his position in the sum of things. His 
vision is right (compare section xxx. 6), therefore he shall 
have more to see ; " to him that hath shall be given." 

Lines 6 sqq. This first part of the address deals with the 
transcendent things : earth and sea, light and darkness, — 
things too great and too ancient to reveal their origin to man. 
The earth is represented under the figure of a vast building. 

13. The sons of God are mentioned in the Prologue (11. 22, 
89) as God's ministering spirits, reporting on themselves and 
the creation. 

14 sqq. The sea, under the figure of a vast Being, born of 
Chaos, full of proud ambition, but submissively in the power 
of God. 



XXVI. THE LORD 329 

And thick gloom its swaddling-band, — 

When I established over it my decree, 

And set bars and doors, 

And said, ' Thus far shalt thou come, and no 

farther, 20 

And here the pride of thy waves shall cease ' ? 

Hast thou, since thy days began, commanded 

the morning, 
And taught the day-spring his place, 
That he should lay hold of the skirts of the 

earth, 
And the wicked be shaken out of it ? 25 

That it should be changed as clay under the 

seal, 
And all things stand forth as in festal attire ? 
That their light should be withholden from the 

wicked, 
And the uplifted arm be broken ? 

Hast thou made thy way to the sources of 

the sea, 30 

And walked in the recesses of the deep ? 

Chap, xxxviii. 9-16. 

23. The Day-spring, or Dawn, personified as one who 
" seizes the coverlet under which the earth has slept at its 
four ends and shakes the evil-doers out of it like flies ; upon 
which form and color return to the earth, as clay (a Baby- 
lonian image) receives a definite form from the seal, and as 
the sad-colored night-wrapper is exchanged for the bright, 
embroidered holiday-robe." — Cheyiie. 

28. Their light, — which is darkness, their deeds being evil. 



330 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVI. 

Have the gates of death been revealed to thee ? 
And the gates of the shadow of death — hast 

thou seen them ? 
Hast thou comprehended the breadths of the 

earth ? 
Tell, if thou knowest it all, — 35 

Where is the way to where light dwelleth, 
And darkness, where is its place, — 
That thou shouldst trace it to its boundary, 
And shouldst be acquainted with the paths to 

its house. 
Thou know ! — then thou wast already born, 40 
And the number of thy days must be great ! 

11. 

" Hast thou visited the treasuries of the snow ? 

And the treasuries of the hail, hast thou seen 
them, — 

Which I have reserved for the time of distress, 

For the day of onset and war ? 45 

Where is the way to where the light is dis- 
persed, 

When the East spreadeth abroad over the 
earth ? 

Chap, xxxviii. 17-24. 

45. Compare Joshua x. 11. The hail is represented as 
stored up in treasuries for direct use in human affairs. 
47. Compare Tennyson : — 

" The wither'd moon 
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east." 



XXVI. THE LORD 33 1 

Who hath riven a channel for the rain-flood, 

And a way for the lightning of the thun- 
der ? 

To bring rain on a land where no man is, so 

On the desert, where no son of Adam dwell- 
eth; 

To satisfy waste and wilderness, 

And t£ cause the springing grass to grow ? 
Is there indeed a father to the rain ? 

Or who hath begotten the drops of dew ? 55 

Out of whose womb came the ice, 

And the hoar-frost of heaven, who brought it 
forth ? 

As in stone the waters hide themselves, 

And the face of the deep congealeth. 

Canst thou bind the fetters of the Pleiades, eo 

Or loose the cords of Orion ? 

Canst thou bring forth the Signs in their sea- 
son, 

And canst thou guide the Bear with her sons ? 

Knowest thou the laws of the heavens, 

Chap, xxxviii. 25-33. 

50, 51. Yet quite apart from human requirements, too, 
God's natural powers are working in silence, doing just as 
great and beneficent things where there is no eye to see. 

60-63. In these lines there may be allusions to mythologi- 
cal ideas now unknown ; nor is the meaning of all the names 
certain. The name of Orion, the " fool-hardy M giant, seems 
to have come from some such myth. The Signs (Mazzaroth) 
are supposably the signs of the Zodiac. 



332 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVI. 

Or wilt thou dispose their empire over the 
earth ? 65 

Wilt thou raise thy voice unto the cloud, 
That a flood of waters may cover thee ? 
Wilt thou send forth lightnings, that they may 

g°, 

And may say unto thee, Here we are ? 

Who hath put wisdom into their reins ? 70 

Or who hath given understanding to the me- 
teor ? 

Who numbereth the clouds in wisdom ? 

And the bottles of heaven, who poureth them 
out, — 

When dust is molten into a mass, 

And clods cleave fast together ? 75 

in. 

" Wilt thou hunt prey for the lioness, 
And still the craving of the young lions, — 

Chap, xxxviii. 33-39. 

65. The always prevalent idea taken for granted, that the 
heavens have influence on the seasons and affairs of earth. 

70, 71. This passage, which is very obscure in the original, 
is here given in what from derivation and context seems the 
most probable meaning. 

76 sqq. The succeeding examples illustrate the variety of 
the providential care and wisdom manifest in the animal cre- 
ation, and by contrast man's utter lack of wisdom either to 
control or to interpret. The lions and ravens are fed, yet by 
means wholly inscrutable to man. 



XXVI. THE LORD 333 

When they lie crouching in their lairs, 

When they lurk in the covert for ambush ? 
Who provideth his prey for the raven, so 

When his young cry out unto God, 

And wander here and there, without meat ? 
Knowest thou the bearing-time of the wild 
goats of the rock ? 

Wilt thou direct the travail of the hinds ? 

Is it thou who numberest the months they ful- 
fill, 85 

And hast thou known the time for them to 
calve ? 

They bow themselves, let their young cleave 
the womb, 

And thus they cast away their labor-pangs. 

Their young ones fatten, grow up in the field, 

Go forth, and return not again. 90 

Who hath sent forth the wild-ass free, 

And the bands of the fleet one who hath 
loosed ? 

Whose house I have made the wilderness, 

And the salt-waste his lodging-place. 



Chap, xxxviii. 40 — xxxix. 6. 

83 sqq. The wild goats live a complete life, from birth to 
death, in a Care just adapted to them, yet far apart from the 
knowledge of man. 

91 sqq. In the wild-ass is a freedom that scorns all control ; 
yet there is some mysterious Wisdom that has " sent him 
forth free." 



334 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVI. 

He laugh eth at the tumult of the city, 95 

And the clamors of the driver will he not hear. 
The choice spots of the mountain are his pas- 
ture ; 
And after every green thing he searcheth. 

Will the wild-ox be content to serve thee, 
Or will he pass the night at thy crib ? 100 

Wilt thou bind the wild-ox with his cord in the 

furrow, 
Or will he harrow the valleys after thee ? 
Wilt thou trust him because his strength is 

great, 
Apd wilt thou commit unto him thy toil ? 
Wilt thou rely on him to bring home thy seed, 
And to gather thy threshing-floor ? 106 

The wing of the ostrich beateth joyously, 
But is it a kindly pinion and plume ? 
For she leaveth her eggs to the earth, 
And warm eth them upon the dust, no 

And forgetteth that a foot may crush them, 

Chap, xxxix. 7-15. 

99 sqq. In the wild-ox, likewise, we see provided in nature 
a strength whose purpose no domestication can utilize or 
human insight comprehend. 

107 sqq. In the ostrich is seen a variety of contradictory 
traits, which no man is wise enough to reconcile and explain. 
How interpret the Wisdom that would see fit to create a bird 
at once wonderfully endowed with swiftness, to escape her 
enemies, yet so foolish as to leave her young at the mercy of 
every hostile foot ? 



XXVI. THE LORD 335 

And that the wild beast of the field may tram- 
ple them. 

She dealeth hardly with her young, as though 
they were not hers. 

In vain her labor, being without fear ; 

For God hath denied her wisdom, 115 

Nor hath she portion in understanding. 

Yet what time she lasheth her pinions on high, 

She scorneth the horse and his rider. 
Givest thou might unto the horse, 

Or clothest thou his neck with the quivering 
mane ? 120 

Dost thou make him spring as a locust ? 

The glory of his snorting is terrible. 

He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in 
strength ; 

He goeth to meet the weapons of war. 

He mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed ; 125 

And he turneth not back for the sword. 

Upon him rattleth the quiver, — 

Flaming of spear and javelin. 

With rage and fury he devoureth the earth, 

Chap, xxxix. 15-24. 

119 sqq. The war-horse, which seems to be created for 
battle, and to delight in the turmoil from which most animals 
would flee, was an object of peculiar wonder to the Hebrew 
mind, perhaps on account of the scarcity of horses in Pales- 
tine. There is no other description of animals in this section 
in which the imaginative spirit expresses itself in such bold 
and loftv terms. 



336 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVI. 

And he standeth not still, — for it is the voice 

of the trumpet. 130 

At every trumpet-blast he saith, Aha ! 
And from afar he scenteth battle, 
Thunder of captains, and shouting. 

Is it by thy wisdom that the hawk soareth 

aloft, 
And spreadeth her wings toward the south ? 135 
Or is it at thy word that the eagle mounteth 

upward, 
And that he buildeth his nest on high ? 
He dwelleth on the rock, and maketh his home 

there, 
On the tooth of the rock, and the strong hold. 
From thence he spyeth out his prey ; 140 

His eyes discern it from afar. 
And his young ones suck up blood ; 
And where the slain are, there is he." 

Chap, xxxix. 24-30. 

134 sqq. From one source of wisdom, which cannot be 
man's, the hawk receives the instinct that directs her south- 
ward, and the eagle is guided to his rocky home, whence he 
can spy out prey. 

139. The tooth of the rock, — the Hebrew metaphor for the 
sharp-pointed rocky summit. 



XXVI. THE LORD 337 

IV. 

So the Lord answered Job, and said : 

" Will the reprover contend with the Al- 
mighty ? 145 
He that censureth God, let him answer it." 

Chap. xl. 1, 2. 

144. This should not be printed as the beginning of a new 
discourse, as is generally done ; it simply summarizes and ap- 
plies the foregoing section. 

145. Job has desired to " bring his cause " before God (see 
section xvi. 4-13) ; this indeed has been his most constant 
longing, and for this we left him all ready, when he ceased 
speaking (section xx. 186-192). Has he still the same desire, 
after all this view of the various Wisdom inlaid in nature ? 
Will he still "contend" (the legal term, see section vi. 4, 
note) as a reprover and critic, after he has seen so much that 
is beyond and above him ? The following words of Robert 
Buchanan interpret well the significance of the Lord's ques- 
tion here, as related to the review of creation that has just 
been given : " Because there is sin and misery in the world, 
because hearts ache and bodies die, shall we turn upon this 
sublimely exhaustless Being, and demand explanation ? Is it 
not something to know how He delights in making, in end- 
less creating, and that One who thus delights cannot be cruel ? 
The explanation will come." 

146. He that is great enough to " censure," to pass judg- 
ment on God, is great enough to answer his own questions ; 
if to him God's way is not self -justifying, no answer from out- 
side himself would justify it. 



XXVII 

JOB 

And Job answered the Lord, and said : 

"Behold, I am too small : what shall I answer 

Thee ? 
I lay my hand upon my mouth. 
Once have I spoken, and I will not answer ; 
And twice, but I will not add thereto." 5 

Chap. xl. 3-5. 

Line 2. The speech from the whirlwind has wrought its 
purpose thus far : it has made Job see God's world in some- 
thing of its true perspective, and that he is not the centre of 
the system, but only a very small unit in the infinite sum of 
things. He does not presume to present his cause ; how 
could he, so small, give it its true relation to the vast universe 
of God's working ? 

4. It is to be observed, however, that Job does not retract 
what he has said ; he simply ventures, with humility and awe, 
to let it remain before God just as it has been spoken. 



XXVIII 

THE LORD 

And the Lord answered Job out of the whirl- 
wind, and said : 

" Gird up thy loins now, like a strong man ; 
I will ask thee ; and inform Me thou. 



" Wilt thou even disannul my right ? 
Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be 
justified ? 5 

Chap. xl. 6-8. 

Lines 4, 5. Job has come to see that he has no wisdom 
wherewith to enter the lists against the infinite Wisdom of 
the world, and pass judgment on what is so complex. The 
Lord now takes him one step further back, and asks him 
why he should separate God's cause from his own, as if they 
must be antagonists. Is there not room, in such a universe, 
for both God's right and Job's ? Nay, and such belligerent 
assertion of a mortal's " rights," — which assertion we will 
remember Job has not yet withdrawn, — is that the attitude 
for utter weakness to assume before infinite Power ? Ques- 
tioning like this, and from such a source, fulfills Elihu T s wish 
(section xxiii. 76) as no words of the friends could do ; it 



340 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVIII. 

Doth an arm like God's belong to thee ? 
And wilt thou thunder with a voice like His ? 
Put on now thy grandeur and majesty, 
And array thyself with splendor and glory ; 
Pour forth the overflowings of thy wrath, 10 
And behold all that is lofty, — and abase it ; 
Behold all that is lofty, — bring it low, 
And tread down the wicked where they stand. 
Hide them in the dust together ; 
Bind up their faces in the hidden place ; 15 

And then will I with praise confess to thee 
That thine own right hand can save thee. 

11. 

" Behold now Behemoth, which I made along 
with thee : 

Chap. xl. 9-15. 

" tries Job to the utmost," revealing and refining the real gold 
of his character ; compare section xvi. 19. This is doubtless 
its purpose, rather than to prove Job in the wrong. 

6. The previous discourse of the Lord's has treated of the 
various aspects of Divine wisdom ; this has to do more with 
portrayals of God's power. With the power of God, as with 
the wisdom, Job must measure himself. 

17. As Job's assumed wisdom ought to be sufficient to re- 
solve its own problems (section xxvi. 146), so Job's assumed 
power, implied in this attitude of condemning God for the 
sake of his own rights, ought to be sufficient to save him. 
Why should he be selfish any farther than he is really suffi- 
cient to himself ? 

18. " The word behemoth may be a Heb. plur. of intensity, 
signifying the beast or ox, par excellence ; but probably it is an 



XXVIII. THE LORD 34I 

Grass, like the ox, doth he eat. 

Behold now his strength in his loins, 20 

And his power in the muscles of his belly. 

He moveth his tail like a cedar ; 

The sinews of his thigh are knit together ; 

His bones are tubes of brass ; 

His ribs like a bar of iron. 25 

He — chief of the ways of God ; — 

Only He that made him can make His sword 

approach him. 
Yet the mountains furnish him food ; 
And all the beasts of the field may sport there. 
Under the lotus-trees he lieth, 30 

In the covert of reed and fen. 
The lotus-trees weave him a shadow ; 
And the willows of the brook encompass him. 
Behold, the river rageth, and he trembleth not ; 
He is steadfast though a Jordan rush against 

his mouth. 35 

Chap. xl. 15-23. 

Egyptian name Hebraized. It has been supposed to be the 
Egyptian p-ehe-mout, i. e., the water or river ox. At all events 
the animal referred to appears to be the hippopotamus, or 
river-horse, of the Greeks." — Davidson. 

26-29. A beast of immense power, yet inoffensive ; unsub- 
duable by any but God, yet living in harmony with other 
beasts. 

34-37. Nor is he lacking in courage : he resists fearlessly 
the raging of the river ; yet he lets himself be captured and 
subdued by man. Such is one manifestation of God's power 
in nature. 



342 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVIII. 

Yet before his very eyes men capture him, 
And pierce through his nose with snares. 

in. 

" Wilt thou draw out Leviathan with a hook ? 
Or with a cord wilt thou press down his tongue ? 
Wilt thou put a rope into his nose, 40 

Or with a spike bore through his jaw ? 
Will he multiply supplications unto thee, 
Or will he speak unto thee soft things ? 
Will he make a covenant with thee, 
That thou mayest take him as a servant for 
ever ? 45 

Wilt thou sport with him as with a sparrow, 
And bind him for thy maidens ? 
Will the fisher-bands traffic over him, 
And retail him among the Canaanites ? 
Wilt thou fill his skin with barbed irons, so 

And with fish-spears his head ? 
Lay but thine hand upon him, — 
And of battle think thereafter no more ! 

Chap. xl. 24 — xli. 8. » 

38. Leviathan, — probably the crocodile, the animal that 
answers most nearly to the present description, though some 
of the details are idealized. 

49. The Canaanites, or Phoenicians, were the typical mer- 
chants of antiquity ; so that the words Canaanite and mer- 
chant became almost synonymous; see Zechariah xiv. 21 ; 
Proverbs xxxi. 24. 

53. That is, one who attempts to vanquish him once will 
never live to join battle with him again. 



XXVIII. THE LORD 343 

Behold, one's hope is belied ; 
Nay, at very sight of him one is cast down ; 55 
None so desperate as to stir him up, — 
And who is he then that will take his stand 

before Me ? 
Who hath first put Me in his debt, that I 

should requite ? 
Nay, under all the heaven — whosoever he is, 

he is mine. 
I will not pass over in silence his limbs, 60 
Nor the fame of his strength, nor the beauty 

of his build. 
Who will uncover the front of his array ? 

Chap. xli. 9-13. 

54. That is, one's hope to capture or subdue him. 

56. Here, then, is a beast no greater in power, perhaps, 
than behemoth, yet wholly contrasted in traits, being utterly 
unsubduable ; this beast also, as well as behemoth, being the 
handiwork of God, made along with man. 

57-59. The lesson of these portrayals drawn. Both beasts 
are vastly more powerful than man, the one mild, the other 
fierce, yet both owing all they are to God. Shall man alone, 
who belongs to God in the same sum of things, bring to his 
Maker an unpaid demand ? In all these things, has God left 
man's life unprovided for? We are reminded of the lesson 
drawn in Isaiah xl. 26-28. 

60 sqq. To me there is no other passage in the Book of 
Job so doubtful as is the remainder of this section. All the 
rest of the book has the unity of tissue belonging to one lit- 
erary idea ; and at this point the argument naturally culmi- 
nates. Not that 11. 60-105 are discordant with the previous ; 
they simply seem like a later addition put on to satisfy some 



344 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVIII. 

Into that twofold bridle who will enter ? 

The gates of his face who shall open ? 

The circuits of his teeth are terror. 65 

A pride are the rows of his shields, 

A seal each one, shut close and bound. 

One cometh so near to the other 

That no air can come between them ; 

Each to his fellow, they are close joined ; 70 

They cleave so together that they cannot be 

sundered. 
His neesings flash forth light, 
And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morn- 
ing. 
From his mouth go forth burning torches, — 
Sparks of fire issue forth. 75 

Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, 
Like a pot kindled, and like a rush-fire. 
His breath setteth coals aflame, 

Chap. xli. 13-21. 

writer's love of description, but not adding to the argument 
either in idea or in emotional effect. 

63. His rows of teeth, " the term ' bridle ' referring particu- 
larly perhaps to the corners of his jaws." 

66. The rows of his shields are the crocodile's armor of 
scales. 

72. His neesings, — the breath from his nostrils, which in 
the sun is said to flash light. 

73. " In the Egyptian hieroglyphs the eyes of the crocodile 
are a symbol of the dawn." — Davidson. This same expres- 
sion, " eyelids of the morning," is used in section ii. 20, to 
signify the dawn. 



XXVIII. THE LORD 345 

And a tongue of flame issueth from his mouth. 

On his neck lodgeth Might, so 

And before him Horror leapeth. 

The flanks of his flesh cleave together, 

Molten upon him, immovable. 

His heart is molten firm, like a stone ; — 

Yea, molten firm, like a nether millstone. 85 

When he riseth up, mighty ones are afraid ; 

They lose their senses for terror. 

Though one reach him with the sword, it hold- 

eth not ; 
Nor the spear, nor the dart, nor the coat of 

mail. 
He accounteth iron as straw, 90 

And brass as rotten wood. 
The son of the bow cannot make him flee ; 
To chaff are sling-stones turned before him ; 
As chaff too he regardeth a club, 
And he laugheth at the shaking of a spear. 95 
His under parts are sharpened shards ; 
Chap. xli. 21-30. 

82. " The parts beneath his neck and belly, which in most 
animals are soft and pendulous ; in him they are firm and 
hard." — Davidson. 

92. The son of the bow, — the Hebrew metaphor for arrow. 

96, 97. " The scales of his belly, though smoother than 
those on the back, still are sharp, particularly those under 
the tail, and leave an impression on the mire where he has 
lain as if a sharp threshing-sledge with teeth had stood on it 
or gone over it (Isaiah xli. 15)." — lb. 



346 THE BOOK OF JOB XXVIII. 

He spreadeth out a threshing-wain over the 

mire. 
He maketh the deep to boil like a cauldron ; 
The sea he maketh like a pot of ointment. 
After him shineth a pathway ; 100 

One would think the deep turned to hoary 

hair. 
There is none on earth his master, — 
He — created without fear. 
On all that is high he looketh, — 
He — king over all the sons of pride." 105 

Chap. xli. 30-34. 

105. In section xix. 62, the " proud beast of prey " is liter- 
ally " the sons of pride ; " and here doubtless the expression 
refers to the proud beasts. 



XXIX 

JOB 

And Job answered the Lord, and said : 

" I know that Thou canst do everything ; 
Nor is withholden from Thee any design. 
1 Who is this that hideth counsel without 

knowledge ? ' — 
Therefore have I uttered, and understood not, 5 
Things too wonderful for me, and I knew not. 
1 Hear now/ Thou sayest, ■ and I will speak ; 
I will ask thee ; and inform Me thou ; ' — 

Chap. xlii. 1-4. 

Lines 2, 3. Job's eyes are open at last to perceive the uni- 
versality both of God's power and wisdom ; an all-pervading 
Care in which he is content to take his place, hushing all 
complaints and trusting where he cannot see. This is the 
grand outcome of Job's experience; an outcome not merely 
in a completed argument, but in a chastened, obedient, en- 
lightened character. 

4. Quotation of the question regarding Elihu, section xxvi. 
2, 3 ; which Job humbly takes up and applies to himself, thus 
virtually assuming the burden not only of what he has rashly 
uttered, but of the short-sighted speculations of his friends 
also. 

7, 8. The Lord's words to Job ; sections xxvi. 5 ; xxviii. 3. 



348 THE BOOK OF JOB XXIX. 

I had heard of Thee by hearing of the ear, 
But now mine eye seeth Thee ; 10 

Wherefore I loathe me, and repent, 
In dust and ashes." 

Chap. xlii. 5, 6. 

9-12. The past hard experience has brought Job immeas- 
urably nearer to God. Between this and his former spiritual 
state there is all the difference between sight and hearsay. 
God is no more a conventional God, the God of a philosophy, 
but the real and actual Presence after which Job has longed ; 
and the attitude that befits such communion is not the self- 
complacent attitude of one who has triumphed, but the lowly 
self-abasement of repentant, trustful love. 

Job's repentance is not to be referred to some definite error 
or event in which he has been proved wrong ; it is due to that 
feeling of earthly impurity which cannot but rise when the 
heart is laid bare before infinite Holiness, — like the feeling 
which prompted the poet's prayer at the end of his work : — 

u Forgive what seem'd my sin in me ; 
What seenvd my worth since I began." 



XXX 

EPILOGUE 
I. 

And so it was, after the Lord had spoken 
these words to Job, that the Lord said to 
Eliphaz the Temanite, " My wrath is kindled 
against thee, and against thy two friends ; 
for ye have not spoken concerning Me that 5 

Chap. xlii. 7. 

The Epilogue, to which many have objected, is not with- 
out its justification in logical necessity. It does not indeed 
portray Job's real reward, which was inward and spiritual ; 
but it does reveal to his unspiritual friends the one vindica- 
tion which they have shown themselves able to appreciate, — 
the vindication of prosperity in this life. If they could so 
confidently promise restoration as the reward of his coming 
to God by their prescribed way of repentance and confession 
of sin, surely no smaller or less palpable blessing should 
follow his brave maintenance of his righteous ways until God 
Himself pronounces his course right. 

Line 5. That which is right, — the whole trend of their 
words toward God (for it is literally, " Ye have not spoken to 
Me ") has been wrong ; for it has had its spring in a selfish 
desire to secure God's favor by indiscriminate praise (see sec- 
tion viii. 63-76), and that selfish desire has led them to deny 
Job's evident integrity, to manufacture for him a sin of which 
he was not guilty, and to deny the obvious prosperity of the 



350 THE BOOK OF JOB XXX. 

which is right, as hath my servant Job. 
And now take unto you seven bullocks and 
seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and 
offer a burnt-offering for yourselves, and my 
servant Job will pray for you ; for his face 10 
will I accept, — lest I deal with you after your 
folly. For ye have not spoken concerning 
me that which is right, as my servant Job 
hath." 

And Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the is 
Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite went 
and did as the Lord spake unto them ; and 
the Lord accepted the face of Job. 

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job 
when he prayed for his friends. And the 20 
Lord added to all that had been Job's two- 
fold. 

Chap. xlii. 7-10. 

wicked in the world. On the other hand, Job's words, bold 
and outspoken though they were, have been honest, speaking 
the truth as he saw truth, and charged through and through 
with loyalty to what is just and loving and Godlike. 

10. Job's intercession for the friends is a remarkable fulfill- 
ment of what they promised him he might do if he would 
" reconcile himself " with God ; see section xv. 52, 58, 59. 

15, 16. The three friends are mentioned; why not Elihu 
also, who championed their cause ? Because he has already 
judged himself. There would be the same propriety in mak- 
ing him appear again that there would be in making a char- 
acter in a drama who has just died reappear and receive the 
plaudits of the audience. 

19. This is merely the fulfillment of the friends' numerous 



XXX. EPILOGUE 351 

II. 

And there came to him all his brethren, 
and all his sisters, and all who had known 
him before ; and they ate bread with him in 25 
his house, and mourned with him, and com- 
forted him for all the evil that the Lord had 
brought upon him. And they gave him, 
each man a kesita, and each man a ring of 
gold. 30 

And the Lord blessed the latter end of 
Job more than his beginning ; for he had 
fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand 
camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a 
thousand she-asses. And he had seven sons 35 
and three daughters. And he called the 
name of the first daughter Jemima, and the 
name of the second Kezia, and the name of 
the third Keren-happuch ; and in all the land 
there were not found women so fair as the 40 
daughters of Job ; and their father gave 
them inheritance among their brethren. 

Chap. xlii. 11-15. 

promises ; see sections iii. 78-97 ; v. 8-14 ; vii. 25-38 ; xv. 
40-59 ; xxii. 90-94. 

29. A kesita, — an uncoined piece of money, which was 
reckoned by weight; Genesis xxxiii. 19; Joshua xxiv. 32. 
The mention of the kesita, which- evidently belonged to pa- 
triarchal times, is perhaps one mark of the author's imitation 
of patriarchal customs. 



3$2 THE BOOK OF JOB XXX. 

III. 

And Jab lived after this a hundred and 
forty years ; and he saw his sons and his 
sons' sons, four generations. And Job died, *> 
old and full of days. 

Chap. xlii. 16, 17. 

43. Job's long life, conformed to the generous patriarchal 
standard, is one of the illustrations of that slight framework 
of legend on which our author presumably built; a frame- 
work that it would be a task both baffling and thankless to 
reconstruct, because the whole soul of the poem is preemi- 
nently an outgrowth of the Wisdom thinking. Its interest for 
us lies in its invention rather than in its legendary basis. 

45. Compare Eliphaz's promise, section iii. 96, 97. 



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ican History on the Stage ; The Shaping of Excelsior ; Emer- 
son's Self; Aspects of Historical Work; Anne Gilchrist; The 
Future of Shakespeare. 

Newman Smyth, 

Social Problems. Three Sermons for Work- 
ingmen. 8vo, paper covers, 20 cents. 



Henry D. Thoreau. 

Walden : or, Life in the Woods. i2mo, gilt 
top, $1.50. In Riverside Aldine Series, 2 vols. i6mo, 

$2.00. 

Contents : Economy ; Where I Lived and What I Lived for ; 
Reading ; Sounds ; Solitude ; Visitors ; The Bean-Field ; The 
Village ; The Ponds ; Baker Farm ; Higher Laws ; Brute Neigh- 
bors ; House- W arming ; Former Inhabitants and Winter Visi- 
tors ; The Pond in Winter ; Spring ; Conclusion. 

Kate Gannett Wells. 

About People. i8mo, $1.25. 

Contents : Average People ; Individuality ; Striving ; Loy- 
alty and Liberality ; Transitional Woman ; Personal Influence ; 
Who's Who ; Caste in American Society. 

Edwin P. Whipple. 

Literature and Life. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents : Authors in their Relations to Life ; Novels and 
Novelists ; Charles Dickens ; Wit and Humor ; The Ludicrous 
Side of Life ; Genius ; Intellectual Health and Disease ; Use and 
Misuse of Words ; Wordsworth ; Bryant ; Stupid Conservatism 
and Malignant Reform. 

Character and Characteristic Men. i2mo, 
gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents : Character ; Eccentric Character ; Intellectual 
Character; Heroic Character ; The American Mind; The Eng- 
lish Mind ; Thackeray ; Nathaniel Hawthorne ; Edward Everett ; 
Thomas Starr King ; Agassiz ; Washington and the Principles 
of the American Revolution. 

Success and its Conditions. i2mo, gilt top, 

$1.50. 

Contents : Young Men in History ; Ethics of Popularity ; 
Grit ; The Vital and the Mechanical ; The Economy of Invec- 
tive ; The Sale of Souls ; The Tricks of Imagination ; Cheerful- 
ness ; Mental and Moral Pauperism ; The Genius of Dickens ; 
Shoddy ; John A. Andrew. 

Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Poli- 
tics. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50; half calf, $3.00. 

George E. Woodberry. 

Studies in Letters and Life. i6mo, $1.25. 

*#* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt 
of price by the Publishers, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 

4 Park Street, Boston ; 11 East rjlh Street, A T ew York. 





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